In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, videoconferencing has become a prominent aspect of many daily work routines. Despite the benefits of this development, scholars have argued that research should consider how trends that emerged during the pandemic may exacerbate pre-existing inequalities. As such, we draw upon evolutionary signaling theory to examine how videoconferencing technology may inadvertently signal one’s social class position, affect judgments of informal leadership and follower performance, and become mechanisms of inequality in the workforce. Through an initial field study (Study 1), our results suggest that people’s home working environments feature various signals that correspond with their social class position. Our subsequent experimental studies (Studies 2 and 3) and -analytic summary show that once a window is opened into an employee's home environment, it can lead others to form inferences about their competence, which affects the likelihood that they emerge as a leader and followers’ task performance. Extending evolutionary signaling theory, results show that participants were influenced by the environment-based social class signals even when they knew these were fake, virtual backgrounds. Thus, these subtle environment-based social class signals reflect novel pathways to inequality that likely are relevant as virtual leadership and videoconferencing become part of the “new normal”.

中文翻译：

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了解您地位的窗口：基于环境的社会阶层对虚拟领导力的影响

在 COVID-19 大流行之后，视频会议已成为许多日常工作的一个重要方面。尽管这一发展有好处，但学者们认为，研究应该考虑大流行期间出现的趋势可能会加剧先前存在的不平等。因此，我们利用进化信号理论来研究视频会议技术如何无意中表明一个人的社会阶级地位，影响对非正式领导力和追随者表现的判断，并成为劳动力不平等的机制。通过初步实地研究（研究 1），我们的结果表明人们的家庭工作环境具有与其社会阶层地位相对应的各种信号。我们随后的实验研究（研究 2 和 3）和分析总结表明，一旦打开员工家庭环境的窗户，就会导致其他人对他们的能力做出推断，从而影响他们成为领导者和追随者的可能性' 任务表现。扩展进化信号理论，结果表明，即使参与者知道这些是虚假的虚拟背景，也会受到基于环境的社会阶层信号的影响。因此，这些基于环境的微妙社会阶层信号反映了导致不平等的新途径，随着虚拟领导和视频会议成为“新常态”的一部分，这些信号可能与之相关。