Introduction to the Study
The study predicted that breastfeeding would be a source of bias in interpreting a breastfeeding woman's competence which would consequently lead to discrimination in hiring a breastfeeding woman.They expected participants to rate the confederate lower in all types of competence: general, math, and workplace.
Independent and Dependent Variables
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There were four different conditions
- Breastfeeding condition
- Sexualized condition
- Mother only condition
- No emphasis condition
Main Results
Breastfeeding condition were seen as lower in competence than all other conditions.Participants also stated that they would be less likely to hire the breastfeeding mother compared to the other conditions.
They rated the breastfeeding woman as lower in all types of competence as predicted.
General Description
The experiment consisted of a confederate being in the same room as the participant of the experiment who was told they would be in a study about forming impression and social networking sites like MySpace.The confederate would receieve a voicemail which was actually a prerecorded message in the "waiting room" with the participant with a message related to either their breastfeeding(breastfeeding), being a mother(mother only), forgetting a bra(sexualized), or about plans (no emphasis).
Then they would have to fill out a MySpace profile with the confederate.
Afterwards they would rate the hirability of the confederate.
Implications
These results indicate that the behavioral intention not to hire the breastfeeding mother along with low competence ratings suggest a high probability of workplace discrimination for nursing mothers.