Appearing self‐confident and getting credit for it: Why it may be easier for men than women to gain influence at work

• Author: Margarita Mayo,Laura Guillén,Natalia Karelaia
• Published date: 01 July 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21857
• Date: 01 July 2018

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Appearing self-confident and getting credit for it: Why it may

be easier for men than women to gain influence at work

Laura Guillén

1

| Margarita Mayo

2

| Natalia Karelaia

3

1

European School of Management and

Technology, Berlin, Germany

2

IE Business School, Madrid, Spain

3

INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France

Correspondence

Laura Guillén, ESMT European School of

Management and Technology, Schlossplatz

1, 10178 Berlin, Germany.

E-mail: laura.guillen@esmt.org

Appearing self-confident is instrumental for progressing at work. However, little is known

about what makes individuals appear self-confident at work. We draw on attribution and social

perceptions literature to theorize about both antecedents and consequences of appearing self-

confident for men and women in male-dominated professions. We suggest that performance is

one determinant of whether individuals are seen as confident at work and that this effect is

moderated by gender. We further propose that self-confidence appearance increases the

extent to which individuals exert influence in their organizations. However, for women, appear-

ing self-confident is not enough to gain influence. In contrast to men, women in addition are

“required”to be prosocially oriented. Multisource, time-lag data from a technological company

showed that performance had a positive effect on self-confidence appearance for both men

and women. However, the effect of self-confidence appearance on organizational influence

was moderated by gender and prosocial orientation, as predicted. Through self-confidence

appearance, job performance directly enabled men to exert influence in their organization. In

contrast, high-performing women gained influence only when their self-confidence appearance

was coupled with prosocial orientation. Our results have practical implications for gender

equality and leadership. They suggest that HR and senior management should play a key role in

building more diversity-friendly organizations. In particular, ensuring that the same job

requirements—explicit and implicit—are applied to both female and male employees is crucial

for fair individual outcomes in organizations.

KEYWORDS

gender, job performance, organizational influence, prosocial orientation, self-confidence

appearance

1|INTRODUCTION

Evidence suggests that gender differences in career aspirations and

the importance individuals place on such job attributes as prestige,

challenge, and power have been shrinking over the past decades

(Astin, Parrott, Kom, & Sax, 1997; Ely & Rhode, 2010; Konrad,

Ritchie, Lieb, & Corrigall, 2000; cf. Gino, Wilmuth, & Brooks, 2015).

At the same time, women are still a minority in male-dominated pro-

fessions encompassing a range of occupations from science to tech-

nology and engineering and including leadership positions in most

industries (e.g., Catalyst, 2015, 2016; Kakabadse et al., 2015;

National Science Foundation, 2015). When attempting to gain

organizational influence and progress in their careers, women

encounter multiple well-documented barriers (e.g., Eagly & Karau,

2002; Heilman, 2001).

One reason often used to explain gender gaps in many profes-

sions involves self-confidence (Ely & Rhode, 2010). The argument

goes, “Women are less confident than men, and this hurts their

chances of promotion.”Yet research found no consistent gender dif-

ferences in self-confidence in achievement-oriented domains

(e.g., Guillén, Mayo, & Korotov, 2015; Ibarra & Obodaru, 2009; Len-

ney, 1977; Mayo, Kakarika, Pastor, & Brutus, 2012; Singer, 1991;

Zhao, Seibert, & Hills, 2005). Nevertheless, self-confidence appearance,

or whether others see an individual as self-confident, matters

because it may trigger important social consequences at work. For

example, research has shown that individuals who appear confident

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21857

Hum Resour Manage. 2018;57:839–854. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrm © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 839

emerge as leaders in team interactions and substantially influence

team decisions (Anderson & Kilduff, 2009). Projecting self-confidence

might be particularly important in male-typed occupations where suc-

cessful individuals are expected to be assertive and achievement

oriented (Heilman, 2001). In this article, we aim to provide further

insights into the question of how people gain influence in male-typed

occupations and whether the answer differs for men and women. In

particular, we focus on self-confidence appearance as a precursor of

individual influence in organizations.

Self-confidence appearance has been suggested to relate posi-

tively to many individual outcomes in organizations such as hiring

and promotion decisions (Smith, 2013). Perhaps not surprisingly, the

popular press offers many prescriptions for individuals “to instantly

appear more confident,”

1

with the assumption that projecting a confi-

dent image is instrumental for individuals’organizational success.

Academic scholars have also evoked confidence as an essential qual-

ity for success in roles as varied as organizational leaders, politicians,

and technical experts (Bass, 1991; Citrin & Green, 1986; Phillips,

2001), in part because those who exude confidence are more likely

to be seen as trustworthy, reliable, and influential (Conger &

Kanungo, 1987; Zaleznik & Kets de Vries, 1975). However, although

confidence self-perceptions have attracted research attention

(e.g., Bandura, 1997), the importance of appearing confident in the

eyes of others has been much more often evoked than empirically

tested (Conger & Kanungo, 1987; Shamir, House, & Arthur, 1993).

Given the broad implications of self-confidence appearance for pro-

fessional success, it is important to understand how confidence per-

ceptions are formed and what consequences they entail. We propose

that in male-typed professions, different ingredients are necessary for

men and women to come to be seen as self-confident at work and to

reap the benefits of it.

We define self-confidence appearance at work as others’percep-

tion of whether an individual is confident about being able to meet

his/her performance standards, or has a sense of agency at work

(Bandura, 1997) (e.g., “s/he seems confident in what s/he is doing”).

In what follows, we specifically focus on supervisor perceptions of

employee self-confidence because supervisors have reward power in

terms of promotions, pay, and professional development of employ-

ees, and hence these career outcomes are likely to be affected by

employee appearance in the eyes of supervisors. To understand the

antecedents of self-confidence appearance at work and its conse-

quences for men and women, we build on attribution (e.g., Green &

Mitchell, 1979; Greenhaus & Parasuraman, 1993; Kulich, Ryan, &

Haslam, 2007) and social perceptions literatures (e.g., Eagly & Karau,

2002; Heilman, 2001; Heilman, Wallen, Fuchs, & Tamkins, 2004).

Drawing on past research, we expect successful job performance

to enhance supervisor perceptions of employee self-confidence.

However, this effect is likely to be moderated by the employee gen-

der. In particular, we expect performance to play a stronger role in

determining self-confidence appearance for men than women. As for

the consequences of self-confidence appearance, we expect it to

unconditionally increase the chances of men to gain influence in their

organizations. In contrast, for women, we predict that self-confidence

appearance increases influence only when women also display high

prosocial orientation—or the motivation to benefit others (Grant,

2008). Taken together, we suggest that through self-confidence

appearance, the effect of job performance is carried on to predict the

extent to which men and women exert influence in their organiza-

tions. Figure 1 summarizes our hypothesized model.

Our study contributes to several streams of research. First, we

add to the attribution literature (e.g., Kulich et al., 2007) by showing

that in male-typed occupations, self-confidence is attributed to high

performers, both men and women. Second, we advance knowledge

on social perceptions (e.g., Eagly & Karau, 2002; Heilman, 2001; Heil-

man et al., 2004) by exploring how appearing self-confident in the

eyes of supervisors has different consequences depending on one’s

gender and prosocial orientation. Our results show that women low

in prosocial orientation are penalized at work, as compared to men

and also to women high in prosocial orientation. Our findings also

point to self-confidence appearance as a mechanism that explains

gender variations in the effect of performance on broad career out-

comes such as gaining influence in organizations. Finally, we also con-

tribute to the leadership literature that has pointed to the importance

of appearing confident for gaining influence and being recognized as

a leader (Ely & Rhode, 2010; Howell & Shamir, 2005). By document-

ing that different “ingredients”are necessary for men and women to

gain organizational influence, we advance our understanding of lead-

ership processes and career progression in organizations.

2|THEORY AND HYPOTHESES

2.1 |Performance as antecedent of self-confidence

appearance

As noted above, drawing on Bandura’s (1997) notion of self-efficacy,

we define self-confidence appearance at work as others’(and in partic-

ular supervisors’) perceptions of whether an individual is confident

about being able to succeed at work, or has a sense of personal

agency at work (e.g., “s/he seems confident in what s/he does”). Con-

fidence constitutes a key of human agency (Bandura, 1977), which is

a broad motive including goal attainment, achievement, mastery, sta-

tus, and power (Bakan, 1966; Lippa, 1995). Other agentic attributes

include ambition, resilience, dominance, assertiveness, academic abil-

ity, and leadership (Abele & Wojcizske, 2005; Bakan, 1966; Eagly &

Karau, 2002).

Perceptions of an ind ividual’s agency are highly dependent

on performance (Awamleh & Gardner, 1999; Meindl, Ehrlich, &

Job Performance Self-Confidence

Appearance

Gender

Prosocial

Orientation

Organizational

Influence

H1

H2

H3

H5

H4

FIGURE 1 Hypothesized model

840 GUILLÉN ET AL.