Even Women Think Men Are More Creative

Harvard Business Review:

The Research: Devon Proudfoot, a PhD candidate at Duke, and her colleagues Aaron Kay and Christy Koval performed several studies of gender bias and creativity. In one, subjects rated how central certain personality characteristics were to creativity. The results showed that both men and women associated creativity with stereotypically “masculine” traits—independence, daring—more than with “feminine” traits, such as cooperativeness and sensitivity. In another study the researchers asked subjects to evaluate a house design but varied the gender of the architect. Both men and women rated creativity higher when told that the architect was a man.

The Challenge: Is gender bias so insidious that it affects how we judge ingenuity, too? And who brainwashed women into believing men’s ideas are better? Ms. Proudfoot, defend your research.

Read the whole story: Harvard Business Review