GralBus-Media Portrayal of Race in Sports Reveals Biases in the Corporate World

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Media Portrayal of Race in Sports Reveals Biases in the Corporate World


Jan 12, 2012


A recent study co-authored by Smeal College of Business professor Andrew Carton reveals the way in which media portrayal of quarterbacks differs according to race. Carton and his co-author also discover an interesting parallel between negative evaluations of black leaders in sports and how success varies among race in the corporate world. The researchers maintain that the stereotypes revealed in the media are not perpetrated deliberately or even consciously, however, their findings suggest that even in a subtle form, biases can affect the manner in which black leadership positions are evaluated in sports and business.

The U.S. may have its first black president and the Fortune 500 its first black female chief executive, but African-American CEOs continue to remain a rarity, a mere one percent of the chiefs of those 500 largest companies. How could this be at a time when diversity is a principal watchword of corporate America?

A new study by Andrew Carton, assistant professor of management and organization at Smeal, and Ashleigh Shelby Rosette of Duke University provides fresh perspective on this anomaly in a way that suggests how difficult change will be. Findings suggest that what steers people's perceptions of African-Americans are stereotypes about blacks' leadership failings, biases whose persistence depends less on rigidity than on a mental flexibility that may not even be conscious.

The findings uncover evidence of this phenomenon in a source seemingly remote from the corporate world -- newspaper stories about college football quarterbacks.

Buried in these press reports is a consistent pattern of associating losses with failed leadership when quarterbacks are black but not when they are white, and associating victories with quarterbacks' native athletic ability when they are black but not when they are white.

"Evaluators adjust the way they use stereotypes according to performance outcomes,” write the researchers. “Specifically, negative leader-based stereotypes will be applied after [a black quarterback's] performance failure and non-leader compensatory stereotypes (i.e., black leaders succeed because of marginal qualities that 'compensate' for negative qualities) will be applied after performance success. If blacks are evaluated in terms of leadership ability only in the context of failure, then negative stereotypes regarding their leadership ability are able to more easily persist."

This elusive stereotyping, they observe, "may provide an important missing link in our understanding of bias against black leaders and may serve as an important contributor to barriers that impede the advancement of black leaders in organizations." The researchers add, "In contrast to black leaders, [such] processes are less likely to occur for white leaders because whites lack strong racial stereotypes."

In part, the study had its genesis in Carton's own experience as a member of his college's varsity football team. As he recalls, "I became aware of certain racial biases, and, when I later enrolled as a graduate student at Duke, I mentioned my experience to Professor Rosette, whose research prominently included bias in the workplace. Some lively discussions ensued, which ultimately led to this study. Quarterbacks are a good focus for any research on leadership, because they have an executive role on the field that is unique in sports. No other position in sports is equated with leadership as much as the quarterback in football."

The study's findings are based on an analysis of newspaper reports over the course of a season for each of 119 teams in the Football Championship Subdivision, the highest level of competition in college football. One story a week was randomly sampled from the leading newspaper of each school's locale, and coders unaware of the nature of the study were assigned to extract words or phrases that evaluated the quarterback and his performance -- for example, where reporters cited a quarterback for "intelligence" or for being "fleet-footed." In all, evaluative text was identified for 113 quarterbacks, 82 white and 31 black.

Analysis focused particularly on text that conveyed competence or incompetence and athleticism or its lack, the former two intimately related to leadership, the latter two not. As the authors explain, "The presumption that black athletes are highly athletic yet lack the attributes of competence has been supported by research from a number of social science disciplines, including communication studies, social psychology, and sports management." Of special interest to Carton and Rosette was how writers accounted for teams' success in view of this presumption of black incompetence and whether they accounted for success or failure differently depending on quarterbacks' race.

"Black quarterbacks were perceived to be significantly more incompetent than whites when their respective teams lost, but this difference was not found when their respective teams won," write the researchers.

For example, black quarterbacks of defeated teams were more likely than defeated white quarterbacks to be tasked by reporters for making bad decisions under pressure. In contrast, the study found that a winning black quarterback was more likely than a victorious white quarterback to be described by such phrases as "very dangerous on the run" or "making plays with his feet."

To help rule out other explanations than bias for the difference in reporters' perceptions of incompetence, the authors sought to determine if it might be related to intellectual or scholastic factors. But neither the academic ratings of the colleges quarterbacks attended nor their grade point averages from high school were significantly associated with these perceptions.

In the corporate world, what might be the compensatory factors that are comparable to athleticism in football? Carton and Rosette draw on evidence from other research to surmise that they are likely to vary depending upon the company’s size and corporate environment.

The findings suggest that one way to combat corporate CEO biases is for companies to institute "perception-based reform" in addition to, or as an alternative to, traditional diversity initiatives. This might involve fostering one-on-one or small-group interactions that can serve to enhance people's awareness of each other as individuals and not stereotypes.

"Black leaders themselves can make their colleagues and subordinates more aware of their qualifications, aptitude, and experience,” write the researchers. “Although it is an additional burden that black leaders will likely have to bear, they can nonetheless take action themselves to address the bias caused by [this] stereotyping.”

The new study, entitled "Explaining Bias Against Black Leaders: Integrating Theory on Information Processing and Goal-based Stereotyping," appears in the current issue of the The Academy of Management Journal.


Source: www.research.smeal.psu.edu