(Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal Professional with Factivia.)
Chatty women are getting snubbed in the workplace.
Men who dominate office conversations are more likely to get ahead, but women who do the same tend to be seen as less capable, new research suggests.
In a recent study by a Yale University business professor, 156 participants were asked to read an article about a fictitious chief executive—described as a talkative man, talkative woman, quiet man or quiet woman—and rate their competency on a seven-point scale. CEOs were conveyed as talkative or quiet based on how often they expressed their opinions in relation to other executives. A rating of seven was considered the highest score for competency.
Participants rated the competency of talkative male CEOs a 5.64, on average, compared with 5.11 for quiet males. Talkative female CEOs, on the other hand, were seen as less suited for their jobs, receiving just a 4.83 rating and far underperforming quiet female CEOs, who received 5.62.
“When women have power, they just don’t have the same license as men to talk as much,” says Victoria Brescoll, the study’s author. Both male and female participants were guilty of discriminating against talkative women, she notes.
—Leslie Kwoh