Two experiments tested the value people attach to the leadership potential and leadership performance of female and male candidates for leadership positions in an organizational hiring simulation. In both experiments, participants ( Total N = 297) valued leadership potential more highly than leadership performance, but only for male candidates. By contrast, female candidates were preferred when they demonstrated leadership performance over leadership potential. The findings reveal an overlooked potential effect that exclusively benefits men and hinders women who pursue leadership positions that require leadership potential. Implications for the representation of women in leadership positions and directions for future research are discussed.

Previous research has examined the impact of stereotypes on outcomes such as career progression and hiring decisions. We present a novel approach to examine the role of stereotypes in predicting self-rated leadership potential across gender and age groups. This research sheds light on the impact of leadership-incongruent and detrimental stereotypes about one's gender and age, for women and older workers, on self-ratings of leadership potential. Across three studies (total N = 640), correlational and experimental evidence shows differential effects of stereotypes about women (vs. men) and older (vs. younger) people on self-ratings of their own leadership potential. Results suggest that both gender and age stereotypes affect older workers more than their younger counterparts (Study 1). Specifically, effects on self-rated leadership potential at the intersectional level show that endorsement of stereotypes has opposite effects on older women to younger men (Study 1). Furthermore, stereotyped workplace cultures impacted women's and older worker's perceptions of job fit (Studies 2 and 3), also extending to job appeal for older workers (Study 3). Results are discussed in terms of career implications for both women and older workers, with a particular focus on older women, whose intersecting identities are leadership stereotype-incongruent.

The Centre for the Study of Group Processes (CSGP) was established in 1992 at the University of Kent. It is a research centre that emphasises the significance of groups in Social Psychology and intergroup relations. Professor Dominic Abrams founded the Centre along with five other social psychology researchers: Professor Rupert Brown, Professor Noel Clark, Professor Steve Hinkle, Dr Lorne Hulbert and Professor Geoffrey Stephenson. The Centre holds an excellent international reputation and remains a prominent influence in Social Psychology research, postgraduate training and teaching. Anna Kapantai, Catarina Morais and Fatima Tresh interviewed Professor Dominic Abrams, the current Director of the CSGP, to gain some insight into some of the research being conducted at the Centre.

How do employees become politically motivated? In this study, we view workplace political motivation as a dynamic cognitive process. We examine how people interpret political experiences at work and form motivations to act politically (or not) by uncovering attribution-based political scripts, which entail learning about political landscapes and motivational pathways. Using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative techniques, we first interviewed 40 ethnic minority employees who produced 810 spontaneous causal attributions about their political experiences. We used software-based latent class analysis to identify how combinations of these attributions formed six political scripts relating to political events that had been detrimental or beneficial for participants. We returned to the qualitative data to explore how the content of these scripts reveals different motivational pathways, or tracks, to navigate political environments; we then linked the six scripts to participants’ ratings of political will, measured three weeks after the interviews. We discuss the implications of our findings for scholarship on political cognition and motivation and racialized politics at work. We also provide practical suggestions for how organizations can make workplace politics more racially inclusive.