Status and Idea Evaluation: Explaining the Bias in Favor of Men

In a series of experimental studies, we investigate the role of social status in the judgement of creators and their ideas. Previous work shows there is a significant bias in the favor of men during the idea evaluation process (Proudfoot, Kay & Zoval, 2015). The present work explores this bias in context of social status, which has frequently been identified as a defining feature of masculinity (e.g. Vandello et al., 2008). Across four experimental studies, we show that social status is a significant driver of creativity, as well as general workplace competency, evaluations. Further, we show that status, in fact, accounts for the bias towards men in creativity judgements.