Participants Participants were 188 Introductory Psychology students at a large Midwestern University who received course credit. Five participants’ data were not recorded due to computer malfunction, and nine participants’ data were excluded because they failed a manipulation check (i.e., incorrectly recalled the gender of the applicant they evaluated or how gender bias was characterized in the confrontation). The final sample included 174 participants (42% female, Mage = 18.94) who were primarily White (80%).1 Design A 2 (confrontation: not confronted vs. confronted) X 2 (bias characterization: vs. gender-intelligence) between-participants design was used. In this experiment and Experiments 3 and 4, all confronted participants were presented with evidence of gender bias. Procedure Up to six participants completed the experiment at a time at individual computer stations. The procedure for Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1 until the point at which the confrontation occurred, with one exception. As in Experiment 1, confronted participants evaluated a female applicant and not confronted participants evaluated a male applicant; however, in this experiment and also in Experiments 3 and 4, the male applicant had stronger credentials (i.e., higher ACT and GPA scores, stronger statement about favorite college course) than the female applicant. Drawing from past research using a similar method (Monteith, 1993, Study 1), we varied these aspects of the applicant’s materials so that ratings of the male applicant would be positive and thus consistent with feedback that he would have been hired based on evaluations. In contrast, ratings of the female applicant were expected to be less positive and thus consistent with feedback that she would not have been hired. Indeed, in this experiment and
perspective, the confrontation came from the investigators responsible for the experts with authority and not individuals who were directly implicated by the purported gender bias. An evidence-based sexism confrontation may be less effective if performed by a lay person who was the actual target of the sexism. Also, although we led participants to believe that they exhibited gender bias so that they could be confronted, we actually found that male and female candidates with equivalent credentials were evaluated similarly (Experiment 1). The absence of actual gender bias may be explained in a variety of ways (e.g., the lab manager evaluation task had lower stakes and was less self-relevant among our lay participants than for the STEM faculty in Moss-Racusin et al.’s, 2015, research, so that gender bias may have been less likely to be activated and applied). Regardless, reactions to an evidence-based confrontation may differ when people have actually just exhibited sexism. One possibility is that confrontation becomes more impactful as the extent of actual gender bias increases and becomes more plainly evident to all. There may be a limit, however, as even an evidence-based confrontation may fall on indifferent ears when perpetrators engage in overt biases that they consciously sanction. Although we successfully identified an effective gender confrontation strategy, a variety of less encouraging caveats must be considered. opportunities for confronting people with concrete evidence that their treatment of women in particular situations (e.g., hiring) is more negative than their treatment of men are far from commonplace. In other words, the requisite conditions for instigating social change through evidenced-based confrontation will frequently be unmet. Perhaps greater applicability of evidence-based confrontation can be found in diversity training interventions. Researchers should direct efforts not only to documenting the existence of gender biases and disseminating their results, but also to designing effective experiential tasks