Implicit and Explicit Attitudes toward Mothers in the Workplace

One laboratory experiment investigated how the manipulation of parental status of a female job applicant affected hiring decisions. Ninety-three participants acted as mock employers and evaluated one female applicant on the dimensions of warmth and competence from the Stereotype Content Model and provided a hiring decision for this applicant. Participants evaluated the applicant on an implicit level with two IATs and explicit level. Results indicated that parental status of the applicant did not affect hiring decisions. Participants did perceive the mother applicant as higher in warmth than the childless applicant, but the two applicants did not differ on perceived competency. Furthermore, participants implicitly associated warmth and competence traits more with mothers. Finally, participants’ explicit attitudes predicted more variance in the hiring decisions than the participants’ implicit attitudes. These results suggest that people may have more positive implicit and explicit attitudes toward mothers in the workplace than previously predicted.