Understanding How Status Cues Can Influence Gender and Race Effects on Leader Selection and Leadership Impressions

The interest in contextual factors alleviating the negative effects of a leader’s (or an aspiring leader’s) gender and race on various leadership outcomes is ongoing, given that women and people of colour are still vastly under-represented in leadership positions. This chapter explores a contextual factor less examined: categorical status cues. More specifically, this chapter presents two experimental studies conducted to enhance our understanding of how expressive (e.g., a name indicating race) and indicative (e.g., an elite university’s graduation photo on the wall) status cues influence the effects of the leader’s gender and race on leader selection and leadership impressions by affecting the leader’s status. The findings of these studies suggest that the effects of leader gender and expressive status cues, each moderated by the perceiver’s social dominance orientation (SDO), on the leader’s status are additive. They furthermore suggest a three-way interaction between leader gender and race (combined), indicative status cues and the perceiver’s SDO: indicative status cues influenced leader selection and leadership impression through status favourably for White men. In contrast, they influenced leader selection and leadership impressions through status unfavourably for Black women, but only when the perceiver’s SDO was higher. The results of these studies have important practical implications for organisations seeking to expand their leadership capacity through improving diversity.