Prior work argues employees benefit from passionate teammates because passion is contagious—it spreads easily from one employee to the next. In a new paper @ASQJournal, we find that's not quite the full story... 1/8

Link to open-access paper:

RT @ThomasGraeber: 🚨 Full-Time Pre-Doc Positions in Zurich Looking for full-time pre-docs (start date b/w June and October '25) to work wi…

Early registration ends tomorrow (January 16, 2025) — spots are running low, sign up for the inaugural Meaning in Life and Work Preconference at @SPSPnews while you can!

For a more practicioner-friendly audience, we summarized the findings from our research in this @HarvardBiz article, including some recommendations for what organizations can do to fix the gendered passion bias.

Seemingly innocuous and even beneficial stereotypes of women as more diligent create a shifting standard that begets a lower bar for “mediocre men.” Quoting Madeleine Albright: “There’s plenty of room in the world for mediocre men. There is no room for mediocre women.” 6/8

We also find that expressions of passion are seen as inappropriate for women—in particular those expressions which are highly affective and likely evoke stereotypes of women as "overly emotional" (rather than verbal statements of high identity-relevance). 5/8

We find evidence across two studies: an actual talent review process and a preregistered experiment using videos with trained actors (plus two supplementary studies). Across both, passion boosts mediocre mens' potential because it shifts predictions of their diligence 4/8

Evaluating "potential" is tricky, and requires orgs to rely on proxies like passion. We argue that passion is viewed as less approriate for women than men (a female penalty) and more meaningfully shifts predictions of diligence for men than women (a male advantage) 3/8

Replicating prior work, we find a gender gap in high potential designations: men are more likely than women to be designated as high potential even when they perform the same (controlling for performance in Study 1 and holding performance constant in Study 2) 2/8

RT @ThomasTalhelm: On the post-doc market? Apply to join us at Booth! @CDR_Booth