Stereotype threat, stereotype lift, role models and entrepreneurship. Do gender stereotypes influence students' entrepreneurial intentions?

Sylvain MAX and Valérie BALLEREAU

Entrepreneurship is stereotypically associated with male characteristics (Gupta, Turban, Wasti, and Sikdar 2009). The negative stereotype stating that "Men are better entrepreneurs than women" is commonly shared and has detrimental effects on women's entrepreneurial intention (Gupta and Bhawe 2007). Moreover women are under-represented in entrepreneurship and media. The present study first intends to analyse whether gender stereotypes in entrepreneurship on the one hand could inhibit women’s entrepreneurial intentions (stereotype threat; Steele and Aronson 1995) and on the other hand favor those of men (stereotype lift; Walton and Cohen 2003). Then, the impact of role models (that is, a counter-stereotypical model) in reducing detrimental effects of negative stereotypes on their target was examined.

Sylvain MAX ([email protected]) is a social psychologist, Ph.D. in educational sciences. He currently is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Burgundy School of Business (France). He also is a member of the Educational Sciences Laboratory, University of Grenoble (France).

Valérie BALLEREAU ([email protected]) is a professor of entrepreneurship at Burgundy School of Business (France), head of the Organization Management and Entrepreneurship Department and Manager of Incub’© ESC Dijon.

Introduction

"Men are better entrepreneurs than women". This is a commonly shared belief which is found in companies as well as in society as a whole. Gupta, Turban, Wasti, and Sikdar (2009) demonstrated in three countries (the United States, India, and Turkey), that entrepreneurs are mainly associated with stereotypically male characteristics. Furthermore, statistics support these beliefs (though do not prove them to be true). Indeed, in developed countries women represent only one third of entrepreneurs (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2007; Allen, Elam, Langowitz, and Dean 2008) and in France, only 19 percent of entrepreneurial managers (APCE 2006). This fact poses a major social problem: belonging to a given social group (that is, women) means that a part of the population of a given country is not reaching its full potential. Consequently, both European and French economic institutions have implemented measures over the past several years in the aim of promoting female entrepreneurship (as they do for minorities and handicapped people). Researchers, notably in experimental social psychology who have studied the question of the under-representation of specific categories in certain social positions, have shown the harmful influence of stereotypical beliefs to explain that phenomenon.

Steele and Aronson (1995) developed a field of studies: stereotype threat theory (also see Steele 1997). According to this theory, negative stereotypes can put those who are stigmatized under additional pressure when being evaluated - namely "the threat of confirming or being judged by a negative societal stereotype –a suspicion- about their group's intellectual ability and competence" (Steele and Aronson 1995; p. 797) - contrary to people who are not concerned by the negative stereotype. The activation of a negative stereotype impairs individuals who are stigmatized via situational working memory reductions

(Schmader, Johns, and Forbes 2008). For example, Steele and Aronson (1995) demonstrated that in an ability-diagnostic condition (that is, a verbal intelligence test), a situation in which a negative stereotype is applicable to Afro-Americans, that African-American students did not perform as well on the verbal test as their counterparts to whom the test was administered as a routine laboratory test. The manner in which the test was administered did not alter the performance of White participants for whom no negative stereotype was activated in the situation. The stereotype threat phenomenon has been generalized by numerous groups (that is, African Americans, women, men, the elderly...) and in extremely various domains (that is, academic performances, memory, sports, managing emotions, negotiating...). That phenomenon has also given rise to numerous attempts to remediate it1.

To our knowledge, only one study that applies stereotype threat theory in the domain of entrepreneurship has been done. Gupta and Bhawe (2007) demonstrated experimentally that the stereotype of "fewer entrepreneurial skills in women than in men" reduced female business schools students’ entrepreneurial intention. The negative stereotype was activated by having the students read a bogus scientific article associating entrepreneurs with stereotypical male characteristics (for example, "aggressive", "risk taking", and "autonomous"). In a control condition, entrepreneurs were associated with neutral characteristics (for example, "creative", "well-informed", "steady", and "generous"). This study is extremely promising though it does have certain limits that we propose to improve in the present study; for example, the fact that only female students were questioned. Stereotype threat theory postulates that the negative stereotype has a harmful impact on entrepreneurial intention that female students (targeted by the stereotype) have but not on male students’ entrepreneurial intention. However, the negative stereotype for women are mirrored by the positive stereotype for men. Certain

1

See www.reducestereotypethreat.org.

research in the field of stereotype threat has studied the impact of positive stereotypes on people who are their target. Walton and Cohen (2003) shed light on stereotype lift, that is to say the beneficial impact of positive stereotypes on individuals for whom the stereotype is relevant (also see Shih, Ambady, Richeson, Fujita, and Gray 2002). Could the weight of these gender stereotypes in entrepreneurship on the one hand inhibit women’s entrepreneurial intentions and on the other hand favor those of men?

We are also interested in the place of women within the field of entrepreneurial studies. Indeed, the field is still new and the theme of female entrepreneurship is less developed in comparison to gender studies in psychology or sociology, for example. Despite the fact that women continue to create more ventures in the world, only six or seven percent of entrepreneurial research is published about them in the eight leading ranked entrepreneurial journals (De Bruin, Brush, and Welter 2006). Just as women are under-represented in the field of entrepreneurship, women entrepreneurs are understudied in academic literature. In addition, women are under-represented in the media. (Baker, Aldrich, and Liou 1997). This lack of media coverage limits social knowledge and recognition of women entrepreneurs. Indeed, through analysing entrepreneurs’ discourse, researchers recently demonstrated (Achtenhagen and Welter 2007; Bruni, Gherardi, and Poggio 2004) that entrepreneurship is a “by essence” male phenomenon. Since women are under-represented in entrepreneurial functions, those who intend to carry out such functions have few positive models with which to identify. A French study reveals that female graduates from France’s elite grandes écoles refer to a lack of successful models to which they can aspire2. In the field of stereotype threat theory, research has been oriented towards "role model" in the aim of reducing the impact of negative gender stereotypes. Presenting "role models", stigmatized people who have 2

Étude Grandes Écoles au Féminin 2005 : « l’Ambition au féminin chez les anciennes et diplômées des réseaux GEF » ; http://www.grandesecolesaufeminin.fr/nos_etudes.html

succeeded in the stereotyped domain, allowed to reduce stereotype threat effects, namely either having the test administered by a researcher from the same stigmatized group, (Marx and Goff 2005; Marx and Roman 2002), or by presenting the biography of a member of the stigmatized group who has succeeded, before carrying out the task (McIntyre, Lord, Gresky, Ten Eyck, Frye, and Bond 2005; McIntyre, Paulson, and Lord 2003). Research results in the field of entrepreneurship also seem to concur -the study carried out by Fagenson and Marcus (1991)-. The authors in question showed that although male characteristics are, on average, predominantly given to describe a successful entrepreneur, women who work in female run companies (that is, role model) attribute more female characteristics to successful entrepreneurs than women who work in male run companies. In the present study, we examine the impact of a stereotypical and counter-stereotypical model of success on business school students’ entrepreneurial intentions.

Finally, in the study made by Gupta and Bhawe (2007), intention was measured with the help of the eight item scale of Zhao, Seibert, and Hills (2005). To measure entrepreneurial intentions we will follow Fishbein and Ajzen’s guidelines (2010) which recommend defining the behavior whose intention we wish to assess in terms of "its target, action, context, and time elements". Entrepreneurial intentions will be specified as the integration of the school’s incubator.

In the present study we therefore intend to analyse business school students’ intention to join the school’s incubator by manipulating the gender stereotype and the proposed model. The gender stereotype will be activated via the presentation of the school’s incubator in which the female/male ratio will be specified. In the threat condition, it was specified in the paragraph that the incubator is made up of 20 percent of women and 80 percent of men

(which is close to the actual figure). This condition is considered threatening as it intends to make, for women, the negative stereotype of women having fewer entrepreneurial skills than men, more salient. In the control condition, it is made up of 50 percent of women and 50 percent of men. This should eliminate the applicability of the negative stereotype to women in the situation. In order to manipulate the identification target, in the threat condition, in addition to the introduction paragraph, it will be introduced either a man (that is, threatening condition plus stereotypical model) or a woman (that is, threatening condition plus counter-stereotypical model) who talks about his or her successful experience in the incubator. The intention will be measured by the (more or less) long term intention to join the incubator. Several demographic variables will be included in the questionnaire. Our prediction is that we will obtain a drop in intention to join the incubator among women in the threat condition compared with the control condition, only when the identification target is stereotypical (that is, a man). Our prediction for men is a stereotype lift effect in the threat condition compared with the control condition, only when the identification target is stereotypical.

Method

Design and Participants 286 first and second year students from Burgundy School of Business, 170 women and 97 men, average age of 21 years old (M = 21.05 ; SD = 1.20) volunteered to participate in the experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three between-subject conditions (that is, control, threatening condition plus stereotypical model, and threatening condition plus counter-stereotypical model).

Measures Measuring entrepreneurial intention. In the study carried out by Gupta and Bhawe (2007) quoted in the above mentioned theoretical part, intention was measured with the help of the eight items scale of Zhao et al. (2005). As previously specified, we chose to follow Fishbein and Ajzen’s guidelines (2010). Thus, we studied students’ entrepreneurial behavior as the intention to join their school’s incubator and we varied the time perspective. The intention to join the incubator scale included five items: “Do you intend to join Incub’© ESC Dijon?”, “Do you intend to join Incub’© ESC Dijon in the next three months?”, “Do you intend to join Incub’© ESC Dijon during one of your work placement?”, “Do you intend to join Incub’© ESC Dijon at the end of your third year of studies?”, “Do you intend to join Incub’© ESC Dijon after a few years of professional experience?”. Participants indicated the degree to which they agreed with each of these statements on a 7-points Likert scale ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree). Since the reliability analysis was satisfactory (α = 0.85) we computed a score for the intention to join Burgundy School of Business’ incubator.

Manipulation checks. In order to ensure that the participants had thoroughly read the article about the incubator and the model of success, we asked them questions about when the incubator was set up, the fact that it is only for Burgundy School of Business students, as well as two questions directly concerning our experimental manipulations, namely the incubator’s female/male ratio and the first name of the model of success they were presented. Only data pertaining to the participants who could correctly remember the last two criteria was included in the statistical analysis.

Demographic variables. At the end of the questionnaire participants were asked to specify their age, sex, year of studies, if they have a project to create or takeover a company, if they know an entrepreneur in their entourage and lastly the name of an entrepreneur that is a model for them.

Procedure The questionnaire was electronically administered to first and second year students at the Burgundy School of Business as Gupta and Bhawe (2007) suggest. Within the framework of one of their classes, they were first asked to answer the questionnaire and then subsequently told they could give their professor feedback on the questionnaire. The questionnaire was presented as a survey being carried out by the Organisational Management and Entrepreneurship Department about students at Burgundy School of Business. There were three parts to the questionnaire. Firstly, the participants read an article about Burgundy School of Business’ incubator. The article put the incubator into a historical perspective (date it was created, number of companies created) and specified its advantages in terms of help provided to start or takeover a company. The negative stereotype was activated through this description according to the experimental condition (manipulated variable). In the “threat” condition (condition threatening to women due to the fact that in this negative stereotype about women having fewer entrepreneurial skills is activated and is potentially applicable to them), the article specified that the female/male ratio for the incubator is 80 percent men and 20 percent women. This percent reinforced the stereotype that entrepreneurship is a domain reserved for men. In order to eliminate the negative stereotype in the “control” condition it was specified that the proportion of women and men in the incubator was the same (50 percent and 50 percent). The second manipulated variable was the model of success that participants were given; a person who joined the incubator and

successfully started his/her own business. The model of success was only given in the threat condition through a short paragraph that came after the presentation of the incubator. For half of them the model of success was a man, thus a stereotypical model, named “Julien”, for the others the model was counter-stereotypical, a woman named “Julie”. For women “Julie” represented a role model that should weaken stereotype threat effects. After reading the article, the participants answered a certain number of filler items among which the questions of interest that assessed their intention to join the school’s incubator in the (more or less) long term. In the third part of the questionnaire, manipulation checks as well as demographic questions were asked. At the end of the computerized session, the participants were thanked and they were told they could contact the experimenters to be debriefed.

Results

Manipulation Checks Data concerning participants who could not remember the information about the incubator’s female/male ratio or the name of the successful model was excluded from the statistical analysis. The statistical analysis was based on a sample of 216 participants (69 men and 147 women).

Test of the Hypothesis The hypothesis of a positive effect of the role model for women when the negative stereotype about women having fewer entrepreneurial skills is activated was tested through a regression analysis. To achieve this, two orthogonal contrasts were computed. The first one

opposes the "threat condition plus stereotypical model" versus "control" and "threat conditions plus counter- stereotypical model" (C1: -2; 1; 1). The second one opposes the "control" condition versus the "threat condition plus counter-stereotypical model" (C2: 1; -1). We regressed on the dependant variable "intention to join the incubator": the variables sex of the participant (CSex: -1 = men; 1 = women), C1, C2 as well as the interactions between CSex and C1 and between CSex and C2. Independent of the participant’s sex variable C1 is significant (b = -0.16, t(210) = -2.21, p < .03) whereas C2 is not (b = -0.08, t(210) = -1.06, p = .29). The hypothesis concerned the significance of these contrasts according to the participant’s sex. The interaction between CSex and C1 is marginally significant (b = 0.13, t(210) = 1.74, p = .08) and the interaction between CSex and C2 is not (b = 0.12, t(210) = 1.60, p = .11). In order to verify that the results matched our predictions, we have to test the simple effect of these two interactions that is to say for the women and for the men. C1 (b = -0.04, t(210) = -0.42, p = .67) and C2 (b = 0.04, t(210) = 0.47, p = .64) are not significant for the women, which goes against our predictions as we expected C1 to be significant and C2 to not be significant. For the men C1 is significant (b = 0.27, t(210) = 2.36, p < .03) and C2 is not significant (b = 0.19, t(210) = 1.61, p = .11), however the pattern of results is not conform to our prediction.

Discussion

In the discussion we will consider the possible reasons for the absence of results in our study as well as the directions our future research will take. Absence of results incites researchers to question how the experiment was carried out as well as the relevance of their measure.

Firstly, in following Fishbein and Ajzen’s guidelines (2010) we specified our definition of entrepreneurial intention, that is to say business school students’ intention to join their school’s incubator. We regarded this measure as having more situational relevance which is why we did not retain the measure of entrepreneurial intention which is generally used in the literature. However, we can question this choice. In light of the participants’ relatively limited knowledge of the incubator, were the ideas of joining the incubator and starting a company synonymous for them? They may intend to create a company without necessarily intending to seek help to do so. In our future research we will keep the measure that seems more concrete (that is, intention to join the incubator) and we will add the usual measure of entrepreneurial intention so as to ensure there is a correlation between the two measures.

Another question concerns the participants in our sample and their knowledge of the activated negative stereotype. In order for there to be a stereotype threat, participants must know about the stereotype itself, without necessarily endorsing it (Steele 1997). Does the French business school population know about the negative stereotype of women having fewer entrepreneurial skills? Before launching a new study we will make sure it does. Similarly, the way in which we subtly activated the stereotype might not have been strong enough whether the negative stereotype is not salient enough for this population (for example, a really salient negative stereotype is that which says women are not as good at mathematics as men). Indeed, that negative stereotype should be particularly relevant, thus threatening, for female business school students whose studies prepare them for the possibility of creating their own companies or taking over companies.

Within the framework of our study, we debated on a performance measure in the field of entrepreneurship. Indeed, in the field of stereotype threat studies stereotype threat effects are usually underscored by a performance drop between stigmatized participants in the stereotype threat condition (that is, with a negative stereotype activated) as compared to stigmatized participants in the control condition (that is, eliminating the negative stereotype). Owing to the fact that this study was an attempt to replicate that of Gupta and Bhawe (2007) and faced with the difficulty of finding a performance measure linked to entrepreneurial abilities, we decided to use the “entrepreneurial intention” measure. We will try to find a performance measure for a future study even if it means designing a "bogus" reasoning test that we present to participants as a diagnostic measure of entrepreneurial skills.

Even if the present study has a certain number of limitations, we remain convinced that experimentation within the field of entrepreneurial studies as well as social psychological theories of stereotypes are relevant avenues of research for entrepreneurship education. To begin with, we feel that the notion of role model is a fundamental concept in entrepreneurship. As we presented in the theoretical introduction, women are on the one hand under-represented in economic journals (De Bruin et al. 2006) and, on the other hand as we observed in our study when we ask students for a model of an entrepreneur 96 percent of the respondents suggested a man and 100 percent who suggested a women were women themselves. So even if our study did not allow us to conclude on this point, studies in social psychology presented in the introduction as well as Fagenson and Marcus’ study (1991) leads us to believe that there is an impact on women confronted with positive female models as regards their decision to become entrepreneurs and on the effectiveness in their entrepreneurial behavior. We feel it is fundamental within the framework of entrepreneurship training to present successful female role models that are far from being the first that come to mind in order to increase their

cognitive availability. This could also happen through information campaigns on women entrepreneurs. We also feel that it is equally important to make teachers aware of the potential impact of unconsciously promoting stereotypes of those who are the target so as to keep women from shying away from entrepreneurship. Knowing the mechanisms in which negative stereotypes act allows, to a certain extent, to limit their effects. Indeed, Johns, Schmader, and Martens (2005) experimentally showed that "knowing is half the battle". As such, within the framework of helping to create and take over companies, the fact of explaining stereotype threat to women, the fact that if they feel entrepreneurial apprehension it is because they face a negative stereotype, could have a beneficial impact on the effectiveness of their entrepreneurial behavior.

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