According to a new study, women remember deeper male voices more than higher toned voices. Oh, wow, that sounds like a study straight out of the 1950s, but really, there's some truth to it. Also, it doesn't have to be just females remembering male voices. I still remember 15 years later my friend Ron Heck's voice, whose tone was deep and warm like a late-night radio DJ's voice. 

In a series of two experiments, David Smith and colleagues from the University of Aberdeen in the U.K. showed that memory in women is sensitive to male voice pitch, a cue important for mate choice because it can indicate genetic quality as well as signal behavioral traits undesirable in a long-term partner. These could include antisocial traits and lack of emotional warmth for example. In order to evaluate potential partners, women appear to rely on their memories to rapidly provide information about the attributes and past behavior of potential partners.

In the first experiment, 45 women were initially shown an image of a single object while listening to the name of the object spoken either by a high or low pitch male or female manipulated voice. They were then shown two similar but not identical versions of the object and asked to identify the one they had seen earlier. The women were also asked which voice they preferred.

In the second experiment, as well as manipulated voices, the researchers used real male and female voices to test how 46 new women rated the voices and how they scored on object memory.

In both cases, the authors found that women had a strong preference for the low pitch male voice and remembered objects more accurately when they have been introduced by the deep male voice.

"Our findings demonstrate that women's memory is enhanced with lower pitch male voices, compared with the less attractive raised pitch male voices," Smith said. "Our two experiments indicate for the first time that signals from the opposite-sex that are important for mate choice also affect the accuracy of women's memory."

The research is published online in Springer's journal, Memory & Cognition.

Think about it: Do you remember deeper voices more often then higher voices? 

A new study from North Carolina State University shows that work experience doesn’t improve women’s chances of finding a job through social contacts.

“The study finds that work experience is important, in large part because it helps us develop social connections that can help people learn about future job opportunities,” said Dr. Steve McDonald, an assistant professor of sociology at NC State and author of a paper describing the study. “However, while men reap the social benefits of work experience, women do not.”

Using a national dataset of more than 12,000 people, McDonald examined the role work experience plays when people find new jobs through their social connections. McDonald found that men who had lots of specialized work experience were often recruited into a new job through their social contacts without having to look for a job. In fact, men with this kind of experience were 12 percent more likely to find a new job through informal recruitment than they were through a formal job search.

Women, however, did not see this benefit. They were no more likely to find a job through informal recruitment than they were through a formal job search.

“Previously, researchers have argued that women face lower-wage payoffs than men with similar work experience because the women have fewer opportunities to develop job skills,” McDonald said. “But this study suggests that a lack of useful social connections may also be driving the gender wage gap.”

This gender disparity is especially problematic for women who are vying for high-wage, managerial jobs, because these positions are often filled through the informal recruiting process that appears to favor men. 

“As a result, the more that can be done to institute formal hiring practices, the closer we will be to an equitable job market," McDonald said. “We need to learn more about exactly why women don’t get the same benefits from their social connections that men do. But right now, we just don’t have the long-term data we need on these social networks to fully understand this phenomenon.”

(Story materials provided by NC State University.)

Hey jerkface! What? You don't like my tone? I'm just trying to increase my income, so don't hate.

Research presented during the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in San Antonio, Aug. 14-16, finds that agreeable workers have considerably lower incomes than less agreeable ones, and that the gap is especially wide among men. Nice women may not earn quite as much as less-nice women, but, when it comes to men, disagreeable men simply leave agreeable ones in the dust.

"Nice guys do not necessarily finish last, but they do finish a distant second in terms of earnings," said the study's authors, Beth A. Livingston of Cornell University, Timothy A. Judge of the University of Notre Dame and Charlice Hurst of the University of Western Ontario. They find that "men who are one standard deviation [roughly 20 percentage points] below the mean on agreeableness earn an average of 18.31 percent (US$9,772) more than men one standard deviation above the mean on agreeableness. Meanwhile, the 'disagreeableness premium' for women was only 5.47 percent ($1,828). Thus, the income premium for disagreeableness is more than three times stronger for men than for women."

The professors concede the finding to be a bit puzzling. 

"Given the increasing reliance of organizations on teams, it would seem that people high in agreeableness would have at least a slight economic advantage over those low in agreeableness," the wrote. 

Why, then, have scholars not "offered more than a minimal explanation" for its absence? To a significant extent, the study suggests, because they have not fully appreciated the powerful effect of masculine stereotypes on men's earnings.

"Disagreeable men reap a double benefit," the professors write. "Their disagreeableness helps them better translate their human capital into earnings advantage, and the same behavior conforms to expectations of 'masculine' behavior." 

By the same token "agreeable men are disproportionately disadvantaged" because their agreeableness "conflicts with social norms of masculinity."

Not that this anomaly provides an opportunity for women to greatly close the earnings gap between the sexes. 

"Seen from the perspective of gender equity, even the nice guys seem to be making out quite well relative to either agreeable or disagreeable women," the professors wrote. "Thus, exhortations for women not to be nice might be overblown. Nice girls might not get rich, but 'mean' girls do not do much better. Even controlling for human capital, marital status and occupation, highly disagreeable women do not earn as much as highly agreeable men."

Since men are most affected by the business world's continuing prejudice against agreeableness, how should they respond to the study? 

"Certainly nice guys should forswear any wholesale personality makeover, even if such a thing is possible," Livingston said. "What would obviously make sense is to maintain their good nature without compromising their self-interest. For example, suppose they contribute significantly to the success of a project. Agreeable people sometimes have a tendency to hide their light under a bushel. But there are ways to make sure that one's contribution is recognized without being disagreeable about it.

"In the end, agreeable folks may make less money than they deserve, but even disagreeable people know that money isn't everything," she continued. "Leo Durocher could certainly be disagreeable, but even he insisted he didn't really mean that nice guys always finish last."

Okay, then. Sorry about saying jerkface. You're actually a really nice person!

(Story materials provided by the Academy of Management.)

For the first time in history, the majority of Americans believe that women’s job opportunities are equal to men’s. For example, a 2005 Gallup poll indicated that 53 percent of Americans endorse the view that opportunities are equal, despite the fact that women still earn less than men, are underrepresented at the highest levels of many fields and face other gender barriers such as bias against working mothers and inflexible workplaces.

New research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University helps to explain why many Americans fail to see these persistent gender barriers. The research demonstrates that the common American assumption that behavior is a product of personal choice fosters the belief that opportunities are equal and that gender barriers no longer exist in today’s workplace.

The study, “Opting Out or Denying Discrimination? How the Framework of Free Choice in American Society Influences Perceptions of Gender Inequality,” suggests that the assumption that women “opt out” of the workforce, or have the choice between career or family, promotes the belief that individuals are in control of their fates and are unconstrained by the environment.

The study was co-authored by Nicole M. Stephens, assistant professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, and Cynthia S. Levine, a doctoral student in the psychology department at Stanford University. It will be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

“Although we’ve made great strides toward gender equality in American society, significant obstacles still do, in fact, hold many women back from reaching the upper levels of their organizations,” Stephens said. “In our research, we sought to determine how the very idea of ‘opting out,’ or making a choice to leave the workplace, may be maintaining these social and structural barriers by making it more difficult to recognize gender discrimination.”

In one study, a group of stay-at-home mothers answered survey questions about how much choice they had in taking time off from their career and about their feelings of empowerment in making life plans and controlling their environment.

The participants then reviewed a set of real statistics about gender inequality in four fields—business, politics, law and science/engineering—and were asked to evaluate whether these barriers were due to bias against women or societal and workplace factors that make it difficult for women to hold these positions.

As predicted, most women explained their workplace departure as a matter of personal choice—which is reflective of the cultural understanding of choice in American society and underscores how the prevalence of choice influences behavior. These same women experienced a greater sense of personal well-being, but less often recognized the examples of discrimination and structural barriers presented in the statistics.

In a follow-up experiment, the researchers examined the consequences of the common cultural representation of women’s workplace departure as a choice. Specifically, they examined how exposure to a choice message influenced Americans’ beliefs about equality and the existence of discrimination. First, undergraduate students were subtly exposed to one of two posters on a wall about women leaving the workforce: either a poster with a choice message (“Choosing to Leave: Women’s Experiences Away from the Workforce”) or one in a control condition that simply said “Women at Home: Experiences Away from the Workforce.”

Then, the participants were asked to take a survey about social issues. The participants exposed to the first poster with the choice message more strongly endorsed the belief that opportunities are equal and that gender discrimination is nonexistent, versus the control group who more clearly recognized discrimination. Those participants who considered themselves to be feminists were more likely than other participants to identify discrimination.

“This second experiment demonstrates that even subtle exposure to the choice framework promotes the belief that discrimination no longer exists,” Levine said. “One single brief encounter—such as a message in a poster—influenced the ability to recognize discrimination. Regular exposure to such messages could intensify over time, creating a vicious cycle that keeps women from reaching the top of high-status fields.”

Overall, Stephens and Levine noted that while choice may be central to women’s explanations of their own workplace departure, this framework is a double-edged sword.

“Choice has short-term personal benefits on well-being, but perhaps long-term detriments for women’s advancement in the workplace collectively,” Stephens said. “In general, as a society we need to raise awareness and increase attention for the gender barriers that still exist. By taking these barriers into account, the discussion about women’s workplace departure could be reframed to recognize that many women do not freely choose to leave the workplace, but instead are pushed out by persistent workplace barriers such as limited workplace flexibility, unaffordable childcare and negative stereotypes about working mothers.”

(Story materials provided by the Association for Psychological Science.)

Female bosses sometimes have a reputation for not being very nice. Some display what’s called “queen bee” behavior, distancing themselves from other women and refusing to help other women as they rise through the ranks. Now, a new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, concludes that it’s wrong to blame the woman for this behavior; instead, blame the sexist environment.

Belle Derks of Leiden University in the Netherlands has done a lot of research on how people respond to sexism. From her own observations of women in the workplace, she thinks that women are often held to a different standard than men; behavior that would be seen positively in men, such as competitiveness, is seen negatively when women do it. Derks co-wrote the study with Colette van Laar, Naomi Ellemers and Kim De Groot.

Derks and her colleagues wondered if the queen bee behavior—denying that gender discrimination is a problem, for example—might be a response to a difficult, male-dominated environment. They gave a Web-based questionnaire to 63 senior women in police departments in three Dutch cities. One of the first questions was about how important their gender identity was at work. For example, they were asked how much they identify with other women in the police force.

For the experiment, half of the participants were told to write about an example of a situation where they thought being a woman was detrimental to them at work, they were discriminated against, or heard other people talking negatively about women. The other half were told to write about a time when their gender was no issue at all and they were valued for their personal abilities.

Then the women were asked about their leadership style, how different they thought they were from other women, and whether they felt gender bias was an issue in the police force. How women answered these questions depended on the strength of their gender identity at work. Women who had been primed to think about gender bias answered like queen bees—that they had a masculine leadership style, that they were very different from other women and gender bias wasn’t a problem—only if they had started out by saying they identified weakly with women at work. Those who identified strongly with their gender at work had the opposite response – when they thought about gender bias, they said afterwards that they were motivated to mentor other women.

The fact that only certain women engage in queen bee behavior, and only after they’ve been primed to think about gender bias, suggests that for organizations that want more women at the top, simply putting women in high-up positions and expecting them to mentor other women won’t work. 

“If you simply put women at higher positions without doing anything about gender bias in the organization, these women will be forced to distance themselves from the group,” Derks said. 

They may deny that gender bias exists, or avoid helping women below them. 

“If you set women up this way, so they have to choose between their opportunities and the opportunities of the group, some women will choose themselves," Derks said. "Why should you choose your group? Men don’t have to.”

(Story materials provided by the Association for Psychological Science.)