Matching faces to expectations : the impact of political and business domain differences in gendered expectations on preferred appearance for leaders

Prior research has demonstrated that feminine appearance is penalized in business contexts. However, a separate body of research, predominantly centered on electoral outcomes, has put forth conflicting results demonstrating that feminine appearance can be beneficial. In a series of experimental studies, I aim to resolve the conflict in the literature by proposing an expectation-matching theory. I propose that, although both domains of politics and business are associated with masculine characteristics, contexts within the political domain are associated with fewer masculine characteristics than contexts within the business domain and, as a result, perceivers expect and prefer less masculine facial appearances for political leaders than for business leaders. The findings of the studies add to the face perception literature and the gender bias literature that examines the impact of circumstances that make gender and professional roles discrepant in their impact on consequential outcomes, such as hiring and electoral outcomes.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Yang, Hee Jin (Hee Jin Heather)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• John S. Carroll.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/114056

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/114056