This is scientific Americans 60 second science. I'm Erica Barris. Got a minute?

In general, even those who purport to have very egalitarian views or even feminist views of the world.

When they were taking this test, and it's called the implicit association test, people

are struggling to really associate women with leadership words.

Political scientists Cecilia Jiang Jung Mo of Vanderbilt University.

She measured what's known as the implicit bias of some 400 study participants. When they saw an image of a man, the subjects

were more likely to pair that picture with words like President and Executive. But when they saw

a female, they chose words like assistant and aid.

Mo then asked the volunteers how they would vote in two-person races.

Those who were least likely to associate images of women with words associated with leadership?

Often chose the male candidate over the female candidate when I intentionally

set it up so that the two candidates were equally qualified.

And sometimes I made the woman slightly more qualified.

The association was a little weaker so that that qualification did help her,

but not as much as I would have hoped.

And if I made the male... help her, but not as much as I would have hoped.

And if I made the male candidates slightly more qualified,

then he sort of overwhelmed people's preferences.

They were actually explicitly saying,

yes, I'm happy to have a

female president but simultaneously they were struggling on this test to

really see a woman as a leader and that was translating to candidate preferences.

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