Despite demonstrating high levels of academic and professional competence, Asians are underrepresented in leadership roles in North America. The limited research on this topic has found that Asian Americans are perceived by others as poorer leaders than White Americans due to perceptions that Asians lack the ideal traits of a Western leader (i.e., agentic) relative to White Americans. However, we contend that, in addition to poorly activating ideal leader traits, Asian Americans may strongly activate ideal follower traits (e.g., industrious and reliable), and being seen as a good follower may pigeonhole Asian Americans in non-managerial roles. Across 4 studies, our findings generally supported our arguments regarding the activation of ideal follower traits and lack of activation of ideal leader traits for Asian American workers. However, compared to their majority group counterparts, we found some unexpected evidence for a more favorable view of Asian Americans as leaders, which was primarily driven by the greater activation of ideal follower traits (i.e., industry and good citizen) among Asian American workers. Yet, we uncover an important boundary condition in that these “good follower” advantages did not accrue when observers experienced threat—revealing how the benefits of so-called positive stereotypes of Asian American workers are context dependent.

尽管亚洲人表现出高水平的学术和专业能力，但在北美担任领导职务的人数却不足。关于这一主题的有限研究发现，由于认为亚洲人相对于美国白人缺乏西方领导者的理想特征（即代理人），亚裔美国人被其他人视为比美国白人更差的领导者。然而，我们认为，除了不能很好地激活理想的领导者特质外，亚裔美国人可能会强烈地激活理想的追随者特征（例如，勤奋和可靠），以及被视为优秀的追随者，可能会将亚裔美国人归为非管理角色。在 4 项研究中，我们的研究结果普遍支持我们关于亚裔美国工人理想追随者特质激活和理想领导特质缺乏激活的论点。然而，与他们的多数群体同行相比，我们发现了一些意想不到的证据表明亚裔美国人作为领导者的看法更受欢迎，这主要是由于理想追随者的更大激活亚裔美国工人的特质（即勤奋和好公民）。然而，我们发现了一个重要的边界条件，即当观察者遇到威胁时，这些“优秀的追随者”优势并没有累积——揭示了所谓的亚裔美国工人积极刻板印象的好处是如何依赖于环境的。