“Keeping in mind the gender stereotype”: the role of need for closure in the retrieval-induced forgetting of female managers’ qualities

In Italian: sicura di sè, ambiziosa, assertiva, competente, energica, decisa, efficiente, tenace, dominante e razionale (agency dimensions); and gentile, disponibile, calorosa, empatica, socievole, premurosa, sensibile, leale, accogliente, e supportiva (communal dimensions).

To exclude the possibility that the RIF effect did not depend on a decreased recall of the Rp− items (i.e., the items expected to be forgotten within the RIF paradigm), we performed re-analysis of the data entering Rp− items recall rate as dependent variable. As before, gender did not influence the interaction and was removed from the analysis. This analysis revealed no significant main effect of NfC (b = −0.72, SE = 3.13, t = −0.23, p = 0.82). As expected, the main effect of dimensions recall was significant (b = −8.79, SE = 3.21, t = 2.74, p = 0.007), suggesting that the recall of Rp− items was lower for agentic than communal dimensions, indicating more forgetting of agentic (vs. communal) Rp− items. More importantly, the interaction between NfC and dimensions recall was significant (b = −17.98, SE = 6.18 t = −2.91, p = 0.005). As we found for the RIF effect, the recall of Rp− items was lower for agentic than communal dimensions (1 SD above the mean: b = −18.43, SE = 4.61, t  = −4.00, p < 0.001), whereas no difference was found for low-NfC participants (1 SD below the mean: b = 0.85, SE = 4.62, t  = 0.18, p  = 0.85). Furthermore, the same analysis was performed entering Nrp items as dependent variable and, as expected, neither the main nor the two-way interaction effects among our independent variables were significant (all ps > 0.46). The above analyses confirmed that high-NFC followers show an higher forgetting of agentic (vs. communal) Rp− items (RIF effect) ascribed to the female manager target.

In Italian: sicura di sè, energica, dominante, vigorosa, aggressiva, ambiziosa, attiva, razionale, competitiva e potente (masculine dimensions); and premurosa, sensibile, empatica, affettuosa, tenera, buona, solidale, accogliente, supportiva e calorosa (feminine dimensions).

If we run simple slope analyses to further understand the two-way interaction between NfC and dimensions recall in the male manager target condition, consistent with our hypotheses, we found that high-NfC participants showed a higher RIF effect of feminine items than masculine items (1 SD above the mean: b = −19.35, SE = 5.87, t = −3.30, p = 0.001), whereas no difference was found for low-NfC participants (1 SD below the mean: b = −8.09, SE = 7.41, t = −1.09, p = 0.28).