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

随着美国人口在种族上变得更加多样化，其劳动力也是如此。目前，非欧洲裔美国人约占美国劳动力的36%，到2050年，这些工人将占美国劳动力增长的85%。然而，在美国经济所有部门的领导人中，种族多样性明显缺乏。例如，尽管亚裔美国人是学术环境中最具代表性的少数群体（占教职员工的6.2%），在所有种族中拥有大学学位的比例最高，但他们只占高等教育高层管理职位的2.4%，而非裔美国人（9.4%）和拉丁裔美国人（3.6%）。这种差异，以及在商业和政治环境中观察到的类似情况，被认为是亚裔美国人职业发展受到“竹子天花板”限制的证据。是什么因素造成了“竹天花板”和其他阻碍少数民族发展的障碍？许多学者认为，这些障碍是由于种族歧视和刻板印象。在当前的项目中，斯坦福大学的Jeanne Tsai及其同事提出，欧美雇主可能会在不知不觉中进行“情感歧视”，或者基于欧美雇主与少数族裔雇员的情感理想（“理想情感”）之间的文化不匹配而进行歧视。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是如何塑造他们的情绪的，而且因为人们对他人基于情绪的判断往往发生得很快，自动地，在有意识的意识之外。在之前的研究中，蔡和同事们发现，北美文化更看重兴奋、热情和其他“高唤醒的积极”状态，而东亚文化更看重平静、和平和其他“低唤醒的积极”状态。因此，与他们的理想一致，欧美雇主可能会寻求提拔兴奋和热情的领导者，这可能无意中不利于亚裔美国人和其他重视并因此表达其他情感状态的员工。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，为什么会发生偏见（即，潜在的心理机制），以及人们是否可以被教导在判断他人的领导潜力时考虑理想影响的文化和个体差异。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影响人们基于情感表达对他人的判断的科学理解，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族群进步障碍的方法，并开发出教导所有族群成员如何在日益多元文化的社会中和谐合作的方法。

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.