► We examined the effect of successful role models on behavior in a leadership task. ► Exposures to female role models empowered women's behavior and self-evaluations. ► Exposure to female role models eliminated the gender performance gap. ► Role models did not affect men's leadership behavior. Women are less likely than men to be associated with leadership, and the awareness of this stereotype may undermine women's performance in leadership tasks. One way to circumvent this stereotype threat is to expose women to highly successful female role models. Although such exposures are known to decrease women's leadership aspirations and self-evaluations, it is currently unknown what the effects of role models are on actual behavior during a challenging leadership task. We investigated whether highly successful female role models empower women's behavior in a leadership task. In a virtual reality environment, 149 male and female students gave a public speech, while being subtly exposed to either a picture of Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel, Bill Clinton, or no picture. We recorded the length of speeches as an objective measure of empowered behavior in a stressful leadership task. Perceived speech quality was also coded by independent raters. Women spoke less than men when a Bill Clinton picture or no picture was presented. This gender difference disappeared when a picture of Hillary Clinton or Angela Merkel was presented, with women showing a significant increase when exposed to a female role model compared to a male role model or no role models. Longer speaking times also translated into higher perceived speech quality for female participants. Empowered behavior also mediated the effects of female role models on women's self-evaluated performance. In sum, subtle exposures to highly successful female leaders inspired women's behavior and self-evaluations in stressful leadership tasks. a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o

Two experiments examined effects of heightened awareness of white privilege (illegitimate advantages held by White Americans) and efficacy to reduce racial inequality on White American college students’ attitudes toward African Americans and White Americans. Efficacy to reduce inequality was either measured (Experiment 1) or manipulated (Experiment 2), and heightened white privilege awareness (WPA) was either manipulated (Experiment 1) or held constant (Experiment 2). All participants, except control participants in Experiment 1, read a passage describing their university's under‐representation of African American faculty. Afterward, they wrote letters in support of hiring more African American faculty and were told there was either a 95% or 5% chance their actions would be effective (Experiment 2) or were simply thanked and their perceived efficacy concerning change measured (Experiment 1). Heightened WPA and higher efficacy (measured and manipulated) independently improved participants’ attitudes toward African Americans, but had no effect on their attitudes toward White Americans.

We examined differences in trust for men and women leaders who adopt relational behaviors during an organizational crisis. We addressed two important shortcomings of previous research. First, we independently manipulated leader gender and leader relational behaviors (interpersonal emotion management) to identify their separate and interacting influences on trust outcomes, which may lead to a leadership advantage for women. Second, we examined how uncertainty about crisis outcomes affects the strength of this advantage. We operationalized trust as both evaluative and behavioral (investment in a company led by the leader). We found support from two experiments with women and men ( N = 412 and N = 400) for the idea of a female leadership trust advantage in times of crisis. And we showed that the advantage is uniquely attributable to female leaders’ use of relational behaviors and is manifested only when crisis consequences are known. We observed these effects for both evaluative trust (Studies 1 and 2) and behavioral trust (Study 2). We invite more research on the conditions that contribute to the female leadership advantage, the gendered nature of leadership behaviors during organizational crises, and the relational leadership qualities that help restore trust in organizations during uncertain times. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ’s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0361684319828292

Precarious manhood beliefs portray manhood, relative to womanhood, as a social status that is hard to earn, easy to lose, and proven via public action. Here, we present cross-cultural data on a brief measure of precarious manhood beliefs (the Precarious Manhood Beliefs scale [PMB]) that covaries meaningfully with other cross-culturally validated gender ideologies and with country-level indices of gender equality and human development. Using data from university samples in 62 countries across 13 world regions ( N = 33,417), we demonstrate: (1) the psychometric isomorphism of the PMB (i.e., its comparability in meaning and statistical properties across the individual and country levels); (2) the PMB’s distinctness from, and associations with, ambivalent sexism and ambivalence toward men; and (3) associations of the PMB with nation-level gender equality and human development. Findings are discussed in terms of their statistical and theoretical implications for understanding widely-held beliefs about the precariousness of the male gender role.

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