BELONGING UNCERTAINTY AND ITS EFFECT ON IDENTIFICATION WITH A HIGH STATUS LEADER
Open Access
- Author:
- McKenna, Julia
- Area of Honors:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Theresa K Vescio, Thesis Supervisor
Theresa K Vescio, Thesis Supervisor
Jeanette N Cleveland, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- belonging uncertainty
identification - Abstract:
- To examine the hypothesis that low status people will identify more strongly with high status people when belonging uncertainty is aroused, we assigned participants to low status “employee” roles and led them to believe that they would interact with a high status “leader”. We also manipulated belonging uncertainty, or uneasiness about whether one belongs in a domain. Prior research has shown that belonging uncertainty is particularly aroused among women in Sceince, Technology, Engineering, and Mathmatics (STEM) domains and ethnic minorities in academic domains because these groups are strikingly underpresented and stereotyped in ways that imply that women and ethnic minorites lack attributes needed to succeed in these domains (i.e., are poorly qualified). Following the manipulation of belonging uncertainty and after staged interactions with the ficticious leader, participants completed measures that assessed admiration of leader, identification (i.e., self-other overlap, Aron, Aron, & Smollen, 1992) , and desire for positive leader evaluations. Findings on identification and leader admiration were consistent with predictions among male participants; male participants in the belonging uncertainty aroused condition perceived significantly more self-leader overlap and felt significantly more admiration for the leader. Our manipulation of belonging uncertainty had less powerful and consistent effects on female participants. No significant effects emerged on one’s desire for positive leader evaluations. The implications of these findings will be discussed in terms of full participant gender (male, female) X gender ingroup representation (underpresented or equally represented among previous winners) X qualifying exam score (minimum or high qualifying score) design. The results of these findings will also be discussed.