About This Project

Team-based work is becoming increasingly popular in the workplace. Recent research shows that members of task groups with more females perceive each other as less effective than those with more males, regardless of their performance ability. The present research will examine how a group's gender composition affects group members' evaluations of one another as well as the group as a whole. The research will also see if people feel differently about themselves if they are within specific groups.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

The explanations given for success and/or failure play an influential role in future expectations and motivation (Bernard Weiner).

Explanations differ based on gender. On certain tasks people tend to explain women's success as luck and men's success as ability (Kay Deaux).

The more females there are in a group, the less competent people feel their group is (even though research shows they perform the same), and the less likely they desire to work with that group in the future (Tessa West et al.).

What is the significance of this project?

Gender discrimination in the workplace is a prevalent issue. Biased opinions, based on gender instead of performance, have detrimental affects on women. Women are able, and desire, to pursue careers that have historically been thought of as male-typed. Women are just as successful at these tasks, but are still not able to find prominent places in these atmospheres. Men and women believe that groups with more women are incompetent. If people in groups with more women succeed, yet this success is attributed to unstable factors, such as luck or effort, they are less likely to want to be a part of these groups in the future. Discovering factors that perpetuate gender discrimination can guide the discovery of factors that can help eliminate it.

What are the goals of the project?

1. Discover if a group's gender composition changes members explanations for success or failure. Participants will work with an online task-group on a male-typed task. All groups will have five members. Groups will be manipulated to be either female dominant (3 females, 2 males) or male dominant (3 males, 2 females). At the end of the group task, participants will be told their group either failed or succeeded. Scale questions will be asked about attribution factors (ability, effort, task difficulty, luck).

2. Relate this to gender discrimination in the work place and spawn further research on ways to eliminate it.

3. Use this research to complete my masters thesis.