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“Keeping in mind the gender stereotype”: the role of need for closure in the retrieval-induced forgetting of female managers’ qualities

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Abstract

The present research addressed the question of whether need for closure (NFC; Kruglanski in The psychology of closed mindedness, Psychology Press, New York, 2004) biases individuals’ memory of female leaders. Merging research on role congruity theory of leadership (Koenig et al. in Psychol Bull 4:616–642, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023557) and research on retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF, Anderson et al. in J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cognit 20:1063–1087, 1994. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.65.5.861), we hypothesized and found that high-NFC participants show (1) a higher RIF of dimensions commonly associated with the leadership prototype (agentic/masculine) ascribed to female manager targets, when selectively retrieved dimensions commonly associated with the female prototype (communal/feminine) were ascribed to the same target; and (2) a lessened RIF of female stereotypical dimensions ascribed to female manager targets, when selectively retrieved prototypical leadership dimensions were ascribed to the same target. Overall, the present findings suggest that when faced with women leaders, high NfC enhances the accessibility of gender stereotype-congruent memories and reduces the accessibility of prototypical leadership ones, thus reducing the RIF of communal/feminine memories.

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Notes

  1. In Italian: sicura di sè, ambiziosa, assertiva, competente, energica, decisa, efficiente, tenace, dominante e razionale (agency dimensions); and gentile, disponibile, calorosa, empatica, socievole, premurosa, sensibile, leale, accogliente, e supportiva (communal dimensions).

  2. To exclude the possibility that the RIF effect did not depend on a decreased recall of the Rp− items (i.e., the items expected to be forgotten within the RIF paradigm), we performed re-analysis of the data entering Rp− items recall rate as dependent variable. As before, gender did not influence the interaction and was removed from the analysis. This analysis revealed no significant main effect of NfC (b = −0.72, SE = 3.13, t = −0.23, p = 0.82). As expected, the main effect of dimensions recall was significant (b = −8.79, SE = 3.21, t = 2.74, p = 0.007), suggesting that the recall of Rp− items was lower for agentic than communal dimensions, indicating more forgetting of agentic (vs. communal) Rp− items. More importantly, the interaction between NfC and dimensions recall was significant (b = −17.98, SE = 6.18 t = −2.91, p = 0.005). As we found for the RIF effect, the recall of Rp− items was lower for agentic than communal dimensions (1 SD above the mean: b = −18.43, SE = 4.61, t  = −4.00, p < 0.001), whereas no difference was found for low-NfC participants (1 SD below the mean: b = 0.85, SE = 4.62, t  = 0.18, p  = 0.85). Furthermore, the same analysis was performed entering Nrp items as dependent variable and, as expected, neither the main nor the two-way interaction effects among our independent variables were significant (all ps > 0.46). The above analyses confirmed that high-NFC followers show an higher forgetting of agentic (vs. communal) Rp− items (RIF effect) ascribed to the female manager target.

  3. In Italian: sicura di sè, energica, dominante, vigorosa, aggressiva, ambiziosa, attiva, razionale, competitiva e potente (masculine dimensions); and premurosa, sensibile, empatica, affettuosa, tenera, buona, solidale, accogliente, supportiva e calorosa (feminine dimensions).

  4. If we run simple slope analyses to further understand the two-way interaction between NfC and dimensions recall in the male manager target condition, consistent with our hypotheses, we found that high-NfC participants showed a higher RIF effect of feminine items than masculine items (1 SD above the mean: b = −19.35, SE = 5.87, t = −3.30, p = 0.001), whereas no difference was found for low-NfC participants (1 SD below the mean: b = −8.09, SE = 7.41, t = −1.09, p = 0.28).

  5. Again, as for Study 1, also in the present study the recall of Nrp items did not differ as a function of our variables and their two and three interactions (all p > 0.10). As expected, this analysis revealed that the RIF effect was not due to fluctuations in the recall of Nrp items, but on the decreased recall of the Rp− items.

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Funding

This study was funded by the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (Grant Number RM116154AECAB067).

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Correspondence to Gennaro Pica.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Handling editor: Don Ross (University of Cape Town); Reviewers: three anonymous reviewers.

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Pica, G., Pierro, A., Pellegrini, V. et al. “Keeping in mind the gender stereotype”: the role of need for closure in the retrieval-induced forgetting of female managers’ qualities. Cogn Process 19, 363–373 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-018-0864-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-018-0864-7

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