Think Leader, Think Male and Female: Sex vs. Seating Arrangement as Leadership Cues

This investigation challenged the long-accepted male-oriented ideology of “think male, think leader” by using social and gender identity theoretical frameworks to examine same-gender biases and the situational leadership cue of the end-of-the-table position. In an experiment consisting of 241 undergraduates enrolled in a large southwestern university in the U.S. (105 men, 135 women, and 1 sex unreported), participants viewed diagrams of male and female figures, in either same-sex or mixed-sex groups, and selected a leader. The end-of-the-table cue held, but the 120 participants (74 women, 46 men) shown mixed-sex groups with a man and a woman shown at both ends of a table chose same-gender leaders significantly more than opposite-gender leaders. Whereas the results suggest that the “think leader, think male” ideology still holds among young men, findings also demonstrated a shift away from this ideology among young women.