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Female and Male Managers’ and Professionals’ Criticism Giving

Differences in Language Use and Effects

University of California, Santa Barbara

David R. Seibold

University of California, Santa Barbara

Jennifer Lee Farris

University of California, Santa Barbara

Study 1 investigated differences in the language used by 86 female and male middle managers and career professionals during role plays of criticism that they had recently voiced to a colleague. Discriminant analysis revealed significant differences in language use, permitting 72% accurate gender reclassification. The language features more indicative of men were number of words, negations, questions, judgmental adjectives, references to emotion, and oppositions. Those more predictive of women were intensive adverbs, longer mean length sentences, hedges, directives, dependent clauses, and sentence initial adverbials. However, nearly one half of these gender indicators had been found in previous research to be predictive of the opposite gender. In Study 2, effects of these language differences on third-party observers’ judgments were assessed. Contrary to earlier research in nonorganizational settings, no differences were found on Socio-Intellectual Status, Aesthetic Quality, or Dynamism. Results indicated a gender-differentiating, but counterstereotypical, language use of female and male managers and career professionals in criticism giving.

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