%0 Journal Article
%T Think Leader, Think White? Capturing and Weakening an Implicit Pro-White Leadership Bias
%A Seval G¨šndemir
%A Astrid C. Homan
%A Carsten K. W. de Dreu
%A Mark van Vugt
%J PLOS ONE
%D 2014
%I Public Library of Science (PLoS)
%R 10.1371/journal.pone.0083915
%X Across four studies, we found evidence for an implicit pro-White leadership bias that helps explain the underrepresentation of ethnic minorities in leadership positions. Both White-majority and ethnic minority participants reacted significantly faster when ethnically White names and leadership roles (e.g., manager; Study 1) or leadership traits (e.g., decisiveness; Study 2 & 3) were paired in an Implicit Association Test (IAT) rather than when ethnic minority names and leadership traits were paired. Moreover, the implicit pro-White leadership bias showed discriminant validity with the conventional implicit bias measures (Study 3). Importantly, results showed that the pro-White leadership bias can be weakened when situational cues increase the salience of a dual identity (Study 4). This, in turn, can diminish the explicit pro-White bias in promotion related decision making processes (Study 4). This research offers a new tool to measure the implicit psychological processes underlying the underrepresentation of ethnic minorities in leadership positions and proposes interventions to weaken such biases.
%U http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0083915