Implicit and Explicit Attitudes toward Mothers in the Workplace

<p>A laboratory experiment investigated how the manipulation of parental status of a female job applicant affected hiring decisions. Ninety-three participants acted as mock employers and evaluated one female applicant on the dimensions of warmth and competence from the Stereotype Content Model and provided a hiring decision for this applicant. Participants evaluated the applicant both on an implicit level with two IATs and on the explicit level. Parental status of the applicant did not affect hiring decisions. Results showed that participants did perceive the mother applicant as higher in warmth and family orientation than the childless female applicant. However, the two applicants did not differ on perceived competence or career orientation. Participants explicitly associated warmth and family orientation traits more with mothers and career orientation traits more with women in general. There was not a strong explicit association of competence traits with either mothers or women in general. Participants implicitly associated warmth and competence traits with mothers; furthermore, female participants reported a stronger implicit association of competence with mothers than male participants. Finally, participants’ explicit attitudes predicted more variance in the hiring decisions for the applicant than the participants’ implicit attitudes. These results reveal that people may have more positive views of mothers in the workplace than previously predicted with the Stereotype Content Model.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science in Experimental Psychology (M.S.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis (restricted to Georgia Southern)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Department of Psychology

Year dc:date.available

2014

Author dc:creator

• Vitiello, Christine

Contributors dc:contributor

• Jessica Brooks
• Nicholas Holtzman

• ETD
• Stereotype Content Model
• mothers
• hiring decisions
• implicit
• explicit
• attitudes
• Social Psychology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/1119

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu:etd-2165