The effectiveness of three strategies to reduce the influence of bias in evaluations of female leaders

This study tests the effectiveness of three strategies [structured free recall (SFR), source monitoring, and error management] to reduce the impact of raters' stereotypes on evaluations of female leaders. Results reveal several three‐way interactions indicating that that the strategies became more effective as raters' implicit bias decreased. Findings show that the source monitoring and SFR methods were more effective than the error management strategy. The results have implications for improving opportunities for women to advance through the leadership ranks. This study adds to the literature by comparing multiple strategies to reduce the influence of individuals' biases in evaluations of women in leadership positions and revealing the importance of considering raters' implicit gender biases in evaluations.     

Stress management: a randomized study of cognitive behavioural therapy and yoga

In this study, a stress management program based on cognitive behavioural therapy principles was compared with a Kundaliniyoga program. A study sample of 26 women and 7 men from a large Swedish company were divided randomly into 2 groups for each of the different forms of intervention; a total of 4 groups. The groups were instructed by trained group leaders and 10 sessions were held with each of groups, over a period of 4 months. Psychological (self-rated stress and stress behaviour, anger, exhaustion, quality of life) and physiological (blood pressure, heart rate, urinary catecholamines, salivary cortisol) measurements obtained before and after treatment showed significant improvements on most of the variables in both groups as well as medium-to-high effect sizes. However, no significant difference was found between the 2 programs. The results indicate that both cognitive behaviour therapy and yoga are promising stress management techniques.     

The interference effect of men's handling of muscular action figures on a lexical decision task

It has been shown in previous work [Action figures and men. Sex Roles 53, 877–885] that male participants who handled extremely muscular action figures had lower body esteem than those who did not handle action figures or a Ken doll. However, the internal mechanisms that dictated this effect are unclear. Therefore, the current study extended this previous work by having male participants handle action figures of varying muscularity and completing a lexical decision task with target words that consisted of both positive and negative body words and feeling words in order to determine if males would be primed to think negatively about their bodies and self or if positive thoughts about their bodies and self would be interfered with. The results show that those participants who handled the extremely muscular action figures responded significantly more slowly to feeling positive words (e.g., content, confident) and marginally more slowly to body positive words (e.g., muscle, bicep) than those who did not handle any action figures. Overall, this suggests that the interference of positive words, not the priming of negative words, is the internal mechanism that produces the decreased body image satisfaction after exposure to muscular stimuli. Implications and future research are discussed.