The Cultural Shaping of Leadership Judgments: The Role of Ideal Affect

领导判断的文化塑造：理想情感的作用

• 批准号: 1324461
• 负责人: Jeanne Tsai
• 金额: $ 47.51万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-08-01 至 2018-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1324461&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Cultural; Shaping; Leadership; Judgments; Role

As the US population grows more ethnically diverse, so does its workforce. Presently, individuals of non-European American backgrounds comprised approximately 36% of the American workforce, and by 2050, these workers will be responsible for 85% of its growth. There is a striking lack of ethnic diversity, however, among leaders in all sectors of the American economy. For example, although Asian Americans are the most highly represented minority group in academic settings (comprising 6.2% of faculty), and have the highest percentage of college degrees of any ethnic group, they hold only 2.4% of top administrative positions in higher education, compared to African Americans (9.4%) and Latino Americans (3.6%). This disparity, and similar ones observed in business and political settings, have been cited as evidence of a "bamboo ceiling," or limit to career advancement for Asian Americans. What factors might be responsible for the bamboo ceiling and other barriers to advancement for different ethnic minority groups? Various scholars have argued that these barriers are due to racial discrimination and stereotyping. In the current project, Jeanne Tsai (Stanford University) and colleagues propose that European American employers may unknowingly engage in "affective discrimination," or discrimination based on a cultural mismatch between the emotional ideals ("ideal affect") of European American employers and their ethnic minority employees. Affective discrimination may be less obvious than other types of discrimination because people are often unaware of how their cultures shape their emotions, and because the emotion-based judgments that people make about others often occur quickly, automatically, and outside conscious awareness. In previous work, Tsai and colleagues found that whereas North American cultures value excitement, enthusiasm, and other "high arousal positive" states more, East Asian cultures value calm, peacefulness, and other "low arousal positive" states more. Thus, consistent with their ideals, European American employers may seek to promote excited and enthusiastic leaders, which may inadvertently disadvantage Asian Americans and other employees who value and therefore express other affective states. The project will examine whether people's ideal affect influences their leadership judgments in different occupational settings (business and engineering) and under varying work conditions (periods of normality vs. periods of crisis), why biases occur (i.e., the underlying psychological mechanisms), and whether people can be taught to account for cultural and individual differences in ideal affect when judging others' potential for leadership. The project uniquely utilizes cross-cultural, experimental, and neuroimaging methods to capture these processes. Findings from this work will advance scientific understanding of how culture shapes the judgments people make about others based on emotional expression, and will advance methods for integrating neural, psychological, and cultural levels of analysis. This work also promises to identify ways of breaking down barriers to advancement for different ethnic groups in the U.S., and to develop methods of teaching members of all groups how to work together harmoniously in an increasingly multicultural society.

随着美国人口的种族多样化，其劳动力也越来越多样化。目前，非欧洲裔美国人占美国劳动力的36%，到2050年，这些工人将占美国劳动力增长的85%。然而，美国经济各个部门的领导人都明显缺乏种族多样性。例如，虽然亚裔美国人是学术环境中代表性最高的少数群体（占教师的6.2%），并且拥有任何种族群体中最高的大学学位比例，但他们在高等教育中仅占2.4%的高级行政职位，而非洲裔美国人（9.4%）和拉丁美洲人（3.6%）。这种差异，以及在商业和政治环境中观察到的类似差异，被引用为“竹子天花板”的证据，或限制亚裔美国人的职业发展。什么因素可能是造成竹天花板和其他障碍，以促进不同的少数民族群体？许多学者认为，这些障碍是种族歧视和陈规定型观念造成的。在目前的项目中，Jeanne Tsai（斯坦福大学）及其同事提出，欧洲裔美国人雇主可能会在不知不觉中参与“情感歧视”，或基于欧洲裔美国人雇主和少数族裔雇员的情感理想（“理想情感”）之间的文化不匹配的歧视。情感歧视可能不像其他类型的歧视那么明显，因为人们通常不知道他们的文化如何塑造他们的情绪，因为人们对他人做出的基于情绪的判断通常是快速、自动和无意识的。在之前的研究中，Tsai和同事们发现，北美文化更看重兴奋、热情和其他“高唤醒积极”状态，而东亚文化更看重平静、平和和其他“低唤醒积极”状态。因此，与他们的理想一致，欧洲裔美国人雇主可能会寻求促进兴奋和热情的领导者，这可能会无意中使亚裔美国人和其他重视并因此表达其他情感状态的员工处于不利地位。该项目将研究人们的理想影响是否会影响他们在不同职业环境（商业和工程）和不同工作条件下（正常时期与危机时期）的领导判断，为什么会出现偏见（即，潜在的心理机制），以及是否可以教人们在判断他人的领导潜力时，考虑到理想情感中的文化和个体差异。该项目独特地利用跨文化，实验和神经成像方法来捕捉这些过程。这项工作的发现将促进对文化如何塑造人们基于情感表达对他人做出的判断的科学理解，并将推进整合神经，心理和文化层面分析的方法。这项工作还有望找到打破美国不同种族群体晋升障碍的方法，并制定各种方法，教导所有群体的成员如何在一个日益多元文化的社会中和谐地合作。