Unveiling the Influence: Comparing the Effects of Female Role Model Embodiment vs. Picture Exposure on Attitudes

Despite the growing awareness of gender equality issues, women continue to be under-represented in leadership positions, partly because they themselves feel inadequate to take on roles of responsibility. One strategy to inspire and support women in assuming leadership roles is to expose them to public figures who contradict stereotypes and gender roles, e.g., by using pictures of successful female role models to prime new attitudes and behaviors. To compare the effects of these conventional methods with a method based on virtual reality embodiment illusion, we explored whether virtually being Angela Merkel might be more effective in promoting leadership attitudes than merely being exposed to her pictures by measuring i) implicit and explicit self-attitudes, ii) self-efficacy, and iii) attitudes towards women in managerial positions. Preliminary analyses suggest that embodiment and priming might work differently depending on the participants' levels of self-esteem and the attributes they ascribe to the model, such as dominance, competence and persuasion, as well as on their admiration of the model. In specific, in Merkel’s body the more the participants with low self-esteem admire her, the faster they associate themselves with the leaders' attributes. Conversely, the more dominant they perceive her to be, the worse they perform. As attributed dominance increases, embodiment also appears to be a less effective strategy than priming in participants with low self-esteem, probably due to social comparison mechanisms. Participants with high self-esteem do not seem to differ at the implicit level. However, at the explicit level it appears that priming might be more effective than embodiment. Although it is certainly necessary to enlarge the sample size before drawing conclusions, the current data suggest that embodiment and priming might be differentially effective for different individuals. This pattern of results may advance current knowledge and help to develop embodiment-based strategies for promoting attitudinal and behavioral changes, ultimately providing new tools to support women in their career journey.