We like to think of ourselves as unbiased and objective in our employment decisions, but with two equal candidates, who are you going to promote? Someone who is described in their performance evaluations as analytical or someone who is described as compassionate? On the other end of the employment spectrum, if you’re downsizing and have to fire someone and the two people in jeopardy are very similar, who are you going to fire? Someone perceived as arrogant or someone perceived as inept? Leadership attributions in performance evaluations are powerful.
The Different Words We Use to Describe Male and Female Leaders
We know that men and women are often described differently in performance evaluations, and now we have more information on exactly what some of those differences are. Researchers analyzed a large-scale military dataset (over 4,000 participants and 81,000 evaluations) to examine objective and subjective performance measures. They found no gender differences in objective measures (e.g., grades, fitness scores, class standing), but the subjective evaluations were very different. Negative words (like selfish, passive, and scattered) were much more frequently applied to women. The specific words used to describe men and women also differed. The most commonly used positive term to describe men was analytical, while for women it was compassionate. The most commonly used negative term to describe men was arrogant, while for women, it was inept — even though men’s and women’s performances were objectively the same.