In the United States, leaders of the highest valued companies, best-ranked universities, and most-consumed media outlets are more likely to be White than what would be expected based on White people's representation in the U.S. population. One explanation for this racial gap is that U.S. respondents' prototype of a leader is White by default-which is, in turn, what causes White (vs. non-White) people to be promoted up the organizational ladder more quickly. Although this explanation has empirical support, its central premise was recently challenged by experimental evidence documenting that U.S. respondents no longer associate leaders, more than nonleaders, with being White. To reconcile these contradictory findings, we conducted three preregistered experiments (N = 1,316) on the topic of whether leaders, more than nonleaders, continue to be associated with Whiteness (i.e., being categorized as White or being represented with stereotypically White qualities). Results suggest that associations between leaders and Whiteness hold up to scrutiny, but that detecting them may depend on what methods researchers employ. In particular, when researchers use direct methods of detecting racial assumptions (e.g., self-report measures), there appears to be no evidence of an association between leaders and Whiteness (Experiment 1). Yet, when researchers use more indirect methods of detecting racial assumptions (e.g., a Princeton trilogy task), an association between leaders and Whiteness readily emerges (Experiments 2 and 3). In short, although respondents refrain from freely expressing associations they may harbor between leaders and Whiteness, these associations do not appear to have dissipated with time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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默认情况下，领导者是否仍被假定为白人？重新审视领导者分类中的种族偏见。

在美国，市值最高的公司、排名最高的大学和消费最多的媒体机构的领导人更有可能是白人，而不是根据白人在美国人口中的代表性所预期的。对这种种族差异的一种解释是，美国受访者的领导者原型默认是白人——这反过来又导致白人（相对于非白人）在组织阶梯上更快晋升。尽管这种解释有实证支持，但其中心前提最近受到实验证据的挑战，实验证据表明美国受访者不再将领导者（而不是非领导者）与白人联系在一起。为了调和这些相互矛盾的发现，我们进行了三个预先注册的实验（N = 1,316），主题是领导者是否比非领导者，继续与白度相关联（即，被归类为白色或被刻板地代表为白色品质）。结果表明，领导者与 Whiteness 之间的关联经得起推敲，但检测它们可能取决于研究人员采用的方法。特别是，当研究人员使用直接方法检测种族假设（例如，自我报告措施）时，似乎没有证据表明领导者与白度之间存在关联（实验 1）。然而，当研究人员使用更间接的方法来检测种族假设时（例如，普林斯顿三部曲任务），领导者和白度之间的关联很容易出现（实验 2 和 3）。简而言之，尽管受访者避免自由表达他们在领导者和白人之间可能存在的联系，这些联想似乎并没有随着时间而消散。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2023 APA，保留所有权利）。