Hart, Courtney

Ponce de Leon, Rebecca

Stevenson-Street, Julia

Woehler, Meredith L

English

Purdue E-Pubs

Dismantling Bias Conference Series Same Behavior, Different Expectations, Different Outcomes: Predicting Intersectional Employees' Networks, Salary, and Performance Ratings Meredith L. Woehler Purdue University, mwoehler@purdue.edu Courtney Hart University of Texas at Arlington, courtney.hart@uta.edu Julia Stevenson-Street Purdue University, steve243@purdue.edu Rebecca Ponce de Leon Duke University, rmp31@dule.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgg Recommended Citation Woehler, Meredith L.; Hart, Courtney; Stevenson-Street, Julia; and Ponce de Leon, Rebecca () "Same Behavior, Different Expectations, Different Outcomes: Predicting Intersectional Employees' Networks, Salary, and Performance Ratings," Dismantling Bias Conference Series: Vol. 3 : Iss. 3, Article 2. Available at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgg/vol3/iss3/2 This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact epubs@purdue.edu for additional information.                                               1 INTERSECTIONAL EMPLOYEE NETWORK GROTHAbstractAmong the explanations for racial and gender disparities in employee outcomes is thelong-standing concern that employees of color and women neither develop nor benefit fromprofessional networks as white men do (Combs, 2003; Ibarra, 1993; McDonald et al., 2009).Research on networks and the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) has converged on the notion that people are more willing to develop relationships with and provide resources to ‘loveablestars’ – employees who are perceived as being both warm and competent (Casciario & Lobo, 2008, 2008; Cuddy et al., 2007). However, this strategy overlooks the fact that communicatingwith warmth and competence may be undermined by racial and gender stereotypes that suggestneither Black, Hispanic, nor White men or women are expected to be high in both warmth and competence (Cuddy et al., 2011). Drawing on SCM and Expectancy Violation Theory (EVT;Bettencourt et al., 1997; Jussim et al., 1987), we theorize that stereotype-based expectations ofan employees’ warmth and competence determine whether communicating with (i) more warmthand less competence or (ii) more competence and less warmth enables employees to developmore beneficial networks (i.e., larger networks, more well-connected contacts, and more high-ranking contacts). Specifically, negative stereotype-based expectations are that Black employees and White men are lower in warmth, whereas Hispanic employees and White women are lower in competence. EVT suggests that coworkers have extremely positive reactions to employees who violate these negative stereotypes. Therefore, in line with EVT, we posit that coworkers will bemore willing to connect with employees who engage in positive expectancy-violatingcommunications – Black men and women and White men communicating more warmth;                                                        2 INTERSECTIONAL EMPLOYEE NETWORK GROTHHispanic men and women and White women communicating more competence –leading tolarger networks, and more well-connected, higher-ranking contacts. Additionally, we predict thatthese three types of network growth (hereafter called ‘network growth’ for simplicity) will positively relate to employee salary and supervisor-rated performance.Extending EVT, we theorize that positive expectancy-confirming communications –communications confirming stereotype-based expectations of Hispanic employees’ and White women’s higher warmth or Black employees’ and White men’s higher competence – remind coworkers of this positive stereotype, which coworkers are likely to accept as accurate. However,in accepting this positive stereotype, coworkers simultaneously accept negative group stereotypes (Kay et al., 2013). Thus, employees’ positive expectancy-confirmingcommunications prime coworkers to apply both positive and negative stereotypes, makingcoworkers less willing to connect with them, thus limiting their network growth. Ultimately, wepredict that this limitation of network growth will negatively impact employee annual salary andsupervisor-rated performance.Lastly, we hypothesize that expectancy-confirming communications impact therelationships between positive expectancy-violating communications and network growth. Specifically, expectancy-confirming communications prompt coworkers to expect behaviorconsistent with one’s positive and negative stereotypes in the future, diminishing coworkersextremely favorable reactions to current positive expectancy-violations. To test our predictions, we first plan to sample American adults from Prolific and utilizethe Princeton Trilogy method (Devine & Elliot, 1995; Katz & Braly, 1933) to validate the previously discussed competence and warmth stereotypes for six intersectional groups: Black,Hispanic, and White men and women in a professional setting. Next, we employ a (previously                                                        3 INTERSECTIONAL EMPLOYEE NETWORK GROTHcollected) multi-source study, incorporating over 10 million email communications amongst over1,000 professionals in an international organization over 10 months. We use a custom LIWCdictionary developed by Dupree and Fiske (2019) to identify the extent to which communicatingwith warmth and competence enables the network growth of these six intersectional groups –and, in turn, increase their salary and supervisor-rated performance.This research contributes to our knowledge of the ways in which race- and gender-basedexpectations can subtly, yet pervasively, impact employees in organizations. Specifically, ourinitial findings suggest email communications can be charged with race- and gender-basedexpectations that have far-reaching consequences for both network growth and ultimate careersuccess. Thus, illuminating these race- and gender-based differences is crucial in order to giveemployees a clearer path to drive changes in their networks and workplace benefits. Our findingsregarding how communications of warmth and competence enable employees in sixintersectional categories to change their networks, and which network characteristics benefitsalary and performance ratings for employees in these intersectional categories are actionable foremployees, managers, and organizations. The differential reception of warmth and competencecommunications constitutes a subtle, yet detrimental form of interpersonal discrimination (Averyet al., 2018; Jones et al., 2017), presenting organizational leaders with a variety of policyinterventions to address biased reactions, rooted in racist and sexist stereotype-basedexpectations (Roberson et al., 2020).

Same Behavior, Different Expectations, Different Outcomes: Predicting Intersectional Employees\u27 Networks, Salary, and Performance Ratings

https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1114&context=cgg

Same Behavior, Different Expectations, Different Outcomes: Predicting Intersectional Employees\u27 Networks, Salary, and Performance Ratings

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