Look Me in the Eye if You’re a Man
The Impact of Gender Cues on Impression Formation in Online Professional
Profiles
P. Saskia Bayerl
1
and Monique Janneck
2
1
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands
2
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Luebeck University of Applied Sciences, Luebeck, Germany
Keywords: Impression Formation, Visualization, Gender, Recruiting, Hyperpersonal Cues.
Abstract: Online profiles are becoming increasingly important in work contexts from recruiting to termination
decisions. We conducted an experiment to investigate the effect of profile layout and more specifically
gender cues on professional impression formation (n=202). The presence or absence of a photo had no
impact on overall ratings or profile likability. Layout, however, interacted with gender of the profile owner
in that male profiles were rated most positively with photo, female profiles without photo. Silhouette images
providing only generic gender cues led to similarly low ratings for male and female profiles. Our study has
implications for users managing their attractiveness on the job market as well as for HR professionals and
organizations. It further extends our understanding of the gendered nature of professional online settings.
1 INTRODUCTION
In 2011, 56% of companies used the internet for
recruitment; an additional 20% were planning to do
so in the future (SHRM, 2011). This is a
considerable increase compared to 2008 (34%;
SHRM, 2008) and illustrates the growing
importance of online information for HR decisions.
The internet, and here especially social media
services, have become an important source of
information from recruitment to termination
(Davidson, Maraist, and Bing, 2011).
New online environments provide users with a
wide range of possibilities from text-only elements
to the posting of photos, videos or even interactive
content (e.g. gifts, hugs, virtual kisses, or gaming
and event invitations). This raises the question what
type of information users should post on their
profiles and in what way to guarantee the best
possible impressions in potential viewers.
In this paper we investigated the impact of visual
gender cues in online profiles on impression
formation in a professional context. Gender remains
one of the most pervasive influences in work-related
contexts. Studies in written (i.e., offline) CVs
repeatedly demonstrate that gender information
impacts the chances of being hired as well as the
proposed salary, and perceptions of competence
(e.g., Moss-Racusin, Dovidio, Brescoll, Graham and
Handelsman, 2012), and that visual cues play here a
particularly biasing role (Cann, Siegfried and
Pearce, 1981; Watkins and Johnston, 2000).
Research on gender-cues for impression formation
in online settings has so far focused predominantly
on personal relationships such as the development of
friendships or romantic relationships, while
professional contexts have been largely ignored.
Yet, the processes for choosing a friend or dating
partner are likely to differ considerably from
choosing a potential employee. Our study aims to
increase our understanding of the gendered nature of
professional online settings.
2 RELATED WORK
2.1 Online Profiles for Impression
Management and Formation
Personal information online is often provided in
profiles, a format similar to a traditional CV, usually
containing a picture, current employment, education,
professional history, and at times hobbies and
personal endorsements by colleagues or friends.
541
Saskia Bayerl P. and Janneck M..
Look Me in the Eye if You’re a Man - The Impact of Gender Cues on Impression Formation in Online Professional Profiles.
DOI: 10.5220/0004480705410550
In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (STDIS-2013), pages 541-550
ISBN: 978-989-8565-54-9
Copyright
c
2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
Services such as LinkedIn, with its mission to help
its members to “stay informed about your contacts
and industry, find the people knowledge you need to
achieve your goals” are specifically geared towards
professionals. Other sites such as Facebook,
MySpace or Twitter have a more personal mission,
but are still routinely used by HR professionals
(SHRM, 2011). Online profiles can thus have a
considerable impact on our professional lives.
Users are well aware that they need to manage
their self-representations to create the best
impression possible and that online profiles are a
potent way to influence impression formation. As
such self-presentation is a strategic activity “to
convey an impression to others, which it is in [a
person’s] interests to convey” (Goffman, 1959, p. 4).
In this sense, impression management can be
understood as “the goal-directed activity of
influencing the impressions that audiences form of
some person, group, object, or event” (Schlenker
and Britt, 1999, p. 560).
Due to the asynchronous and often (semi-)
anonymous nature of online communication, users
experience greater control over their self-
presentation. For instance, they may choose
especially favorable images and descriptions,
include or consciously omit personal information
such as age or relationship status or post comments
and links indicating an interesting, ‘well-rounded’
personality (e.g., Zhao, Grasmuck, and Martin,
2008). By placing personal information in their
profiles, users make explicit identity claims, which
are used by viewers to construct a picture of their
personality (Vazire and Gosling, 2004). Some even
use the relative anonymity of the internet to create a
whole new personality on the Web leading to
questions of deception and identity construction in
online communication and relationships (e.g. Stone,
1996; Turkle, 1995; Donath, 1999; Gibbs, Ellison
and Heino, 2006).Yet, while users conduct
impression management, it is questionable whether
they are always aware of the impact of their design
choices (Labrecque, Markos and Milne, 2011).
A first impression of a person often decides
whether further contact is looked for and thus
whether a relationship develops at all. Impression
formation is thus an important step in the
development of relationships (Goffman, 1959).
People meeting exclusively online lack the clues
available in face-to-face situations such as age, sex,
ethnicity or physical appearance to form immediate
impressions. In such ‘zero-history relationships’
online profiles often provide the information
normally collected during a first personal meeting,
and allow viewers to form a – more or less detailed
or truthful – impression about the person. Much as
website quality is seen by potential buyers as a
signal of product quality (Wells, Valacich and Hess,
2011), the layout of online profiles sends signals
about a person’s attractiveness as potential friend,
partner or employee. In this process, visual cues
about a person obtain a particularly important role.
2.2 The Role of Visual Cues
in Impression Formation
Theories such as social presence (Short, Williams
and Christie, 1976) and media richness (Daft and
Lengel, 1984, 1986) assume that relationship
formation is hindered in online environments due to
the lack of physical presence, which creates
restricted, ‘one-dimensional’ pictures of a person. If
a person is unknown, the lack of information leads
to uncertainty and thus to a more negative picture of
a person when compared to face-to-face encounters
(Berger and Calabrese, 1975). In such situations,
visual information can reduce uncertainty about an
interaction partner. Visual cues such as age, gender,
attractiveness or ethnicity are one of the most
important aspects for impression formation and
management, and as such critical for the initial
evaluation of an interaction partner and the decision
to pursue further acquaintance (Duck, 1982), be it
online of offline. Using photos in online
environments should thus lead to more positive
impressions of interaction partners (e.g., Berger and
Douglas, 1981).
The hyperpersonal communication model
proposed by Walther (1996, 1997) makes exactly the
opposite prediction. The hyperpersonal model
suggests that anonymity – or more generally the lack
of knowledge about a communication partner – may
lead to exaggerated positive perceptions instead of
negative ones. In online environments, senders can
carefully select, which information they show about
themselves or what they communicate and how.
This selectiveness provides the counterpart with a
(probably) highly positive picture of the person that
is independent from (perhaps more negative) aspects
the sender cannot control such as physical
attractiveness. This leads to a more positive attitude
in the viewer than might be the case in an offline
encounter. These positive expectations, in
consequence, will lead to more positive feedback
and thus create a ‘self-fulfilling’ prophecy of
positive impressions. In this way, the absence of
information can actually lead to a more positive
(hyperpersonal) impression of a person. Support for
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542
this process was found by Hancock and Dunham
(2001), who showed that, while the breadth of
impressions in zero-history online encounters is
lower compared to face-to-face situations, the
intensity of impressions is higher. That is,
interaction partners rate their counterpart in a more
extreme way, if they only communicate with them
over text.
While little debate exists that visual information
is an important factor for impression formation,
theoretical models make thus contradictory
predictions about their effect: Media richness and
uncertainty reduction theory predict a positive effect,
while the hyperpersonal communication model
suggests a more negative impact. Walther, Slovacek,
and Tidwell (2001) suggested a possible way to
solve this contradiction. Comparing short-term and
long-term virtual groups, they demonstrated that the
effect of visual information is moderated by the
length of relationships. For partners, who did not
know each other, the presence of a picture increased
affection and social attraction, while the introduction
of a picture at a later stage decreased mutual
attraction. Relationships conducted under CMC
conditions can over time become as personal and
intense as face-to-face relationships (e.g., Tidwell
and Walther, 2002; Wang, Moon, Kwon, Evans and
Stefanone, 2010; Walther et al., 2001). The negative
effects of computer-mediated communication are
thus confined to interactions, in which
communication partners have no former knowledge
of each other (so-called ‘zero-history’ encounters).
In a work context, and more specifically in
recruitment and selection decisions, zero-history
encounters tend to be the norm. Not knowing a
potential employee or colleague is a considerable
source of uncertainty. In this case online profiles are
usually viewed with the expectation of future
professional interactions. We therefore expect that in
this situation, additional personal information in the
form of a photo will improve first impressions of a
person. Professional profiles with photo should thus
lead to more positive ratings than profiles without
photo.
Hypothesis 1: Professional profiles with photo
will be rated more positively than professional
profiles without photo.
2.3 The Impact of Gender
People in online environments often rely on
stereotypes to make decisions about a person,
especially if little individuating information about a
person is available (Chan and Mendelson, 2010).
Stereotypes reduce overload, but also augment an
“information-impoverished environment” (Stangnor
and Schaller, 1996, p. 21). Prototypes are formed
based on own experiences or socio-cultural
categories and can be activated by subtle cues such
as user names.
One of the most pervasive bases for prototypes
and stereotyping is gender. Contrary to early hopes
of the equalizing effect of computer-mediated
communication, gender remains an important factor
also in online impression formation. Wiliams and
Mendelson (2008), for instance, found that
judgments on masculinity, femininity, and likability
were identical for men and women, if the gender of
the interaction partner was unknown. Knowledge of
the other’s gender, in contrast, led to gender-typical
attributions of men as more masculine and women
as more feminine. Viewers also base attributions of
another’s personality on gender cues in profiles
(Vazire and Gosling, 2004). Stereotyping effects,
and according reactions, can even be observed, when
the gender of a person is only inferred through a
gender-identifying name (Christofides, Islam and
Desmarais, 2009) or a computer-based avatar (Lee,
2004).
The effect of gender cues for online impression
formation is of great importance for professional
contexts, in which gender-stereotyping is still
pervasive despite decades of initiatives and tight
regulations through equality laws (e.g., Marlow,
Schneider and Nelson, 1997; Moss-Racusin et al.,
2012; Vancouver and Ilgen, 1989). While gender
information is hard to exclude from online profiles,
especially in a professional context, the question
remains how prevalent this information should be.
The strongest cue to gender is a personal photo,
whereas the presence of simply a name can be
considered a weak clue.
Given the importance of gender cues on online
impression formation and their biasing effect on
perceptions of men and women (cp. William and
Mendelson, 2008), we expect that the presence or
absence of strong gender cues will influence the
ratings of male versus female profiles also in
professional profiles. We do not make specific
assumptions of the direction of the effect.
Hypothesis 2: Presence or absence of a photo
will impact the ratings of male profiles differently
than female profiles.
Next to gender information photos also provide
information about the look of the person – thus
confounding the effect of gender cue strength with
the degree of an individual’s attractiveness. Physical
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543
attractiveness of applicants has been shown as a
continuous source for biases in work-related
contexts, although the relationship remains complex.
A meta-analysis by Hosoda, Stone-Romero and
Coats (2003) suggests that higher attractiveness
generally leads to more positive job-related
outcomes. Indications are that this relationship holds
also in non-Western cultures (Dion, Pak and Dion,
1990). Yet physical attractiveness can also have a
negative impact. This reversal of a “beautiful is
good” bias into the “beauty is beastly” effect
(Heilman and Surawati, 1979) seems to be driven by
task type. Higher physical attractiveness is counter-
productive for individuals applying to or working in
a position which is perceived as traditionally held by
the opposite sex (Cash, Gillen and Burns, 1977;
Heilman and Stopeck, 1985a, 1985b).
Online profiles (as well as traditional offline
CVs) generally offer the possibility to do without a
personal picture. In this case, however, online
profiles often contain generic gender information by
using a male or female silhouette (i.e., human
outline). Replacing the photo with a silhouette
eliminates individual features, while still indicating
the gender of a person. In such situations gender
information is emphasized, although de-
individualized. Given the fact that gender
information is a very powerful trigger for
stereotypes, the question arises whether such generic
gender cues play an (additional) role. If
attractiveness of the profile owner is the main factor
driving profile ratings, it may be expected that
without the personal picture, the effects of profile
gender would be less pronounced. We therefore also
investigated the following research question:
How does generic (i.e., depersonalized) gender
information impact impression formation in online
profiles?
3 METHODS
3.1 Design
To investigate the effects proposed in hypotheses 1
and 2, we compared professional profiles with and
without photos. We further added a third condition
introducing gender-indicating silhouette images to
investigate our research question on generic gender
cues. The study thus followed a 2x3 design testing
profile gender (female or male) and three variations
of profile layout: one with photo (strong gender cue
condition), one without photo (weak gender cue
condition), and one with a gender-indicating
silhouette images (generic gender cue condition).
Photographs were taken from a research database
(PICS, The Psychological Image Collection at
Sterling). To reduce biasing effects due to the
attractiveness of a person (cp. Hosoda et al., 2003),
photos were chosen with people of average
attractiveness. This was confirmed through ratings
by nine individuals (scale 1-7; range 3.80-4.89). No
significant difference was found in attractiveness of
male and female photos (t(8)= -.92, p=.39).
3.2 Sample
Undergraduate and graduate adult learners were
recruited through two online study panels at German
universities in return for study credit and the chance
to win a 25 Euro voucher from the online store
Amazon. A total of 257 people participated. We
excluded 51 participants, because they either did not
provide any profile ratings (drop-outs after the
introduction page or first profile, 46 participants) or
answered with the same rating for all profiles (5
participants). This retained 202 participants. The
majority of the students were female (77.2%). The
average age was 30.7 years (sd = 9.2) indicating a
mature sample.
3.3 Material and Procedure
We prepared two profiles for each combination of
within-subject factors, i.e., for each layout variation
two profiles were prepared for women and men,
leading to a total of 12 profiles. All profiles were
fictitious. Every profile provided the name of the
person to enable identification of the person as either
female or male, even if no photo was provided. It
further provided information on the location of the
person, his or her task, education, age, and areas of
special expertise. To make the profiles more
believable, we also included information on private
interests. Figure 1 shows examples of profiles with
and without picture as well as with male and female
silhouettes.
Participants rated all twelve profiles. Each
profile was presented on a separate page with the
profile shown on top of the page and the survey
questions directly below. The twelve profiles were
randomized to avoid sequence effects. At the end of
the survey, a separate page asked for demographic
information (gender, age, field of education, and
experience with virtual team work). Participants
were given the following instruction before the
rating:
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You work in a company with branches in several
German cities. For a new project a team needs to be
created with members from several branches. The
project work will primarily be done ‘virtually’, i.e.,
using electronic media such as e-mail, video-
conferencing, etc. As part of the project team you
can participate in the selection of the team members.
Your task: On the next pages you will see personal
profiles of twelve potential team members. Please
consider them carefully and rate them according to
a short survey. [German in original]
Figure 1: Examples for the three layout variations.
Measures. Each person in the profile was rated on
12 aspects using a 7-step semantic differential (i.e.,
agreeable/disagreeable, friendly/unfriendly,
likable/dislikable, attractive/unattractive, sociable/
unsociable, civil/uncivil, successful/unsuccessful,
competent/incompetent, efficient/inefficient, reliable
/unreliable, active/inactive, correct/incorrect). All 12
aspects loaded on the same factor. We therefore
summarized the 12 aspects into one mean value for
an overall profile rating. The reliability of the
resulting scale was high with α = .98. A separate
item measured the overall likability of the profile
(“The profile appeals to me”) on a scale from ‘1:not
at all’ to ‘7:very much’. For the comparison of the
layout and gender variations, we summarized each
group of profiles (i.e., female with photo, male with
photo, etc.) into a rating variable for both the overall
profile rating and the likability evaluation.
Past research has shown that experience with
virtual environments can influence the perception of
online profiles (Nowak and Rauh, 2008). We
therefore included experience with virtual team
work as control variable (rated on a scale from ‘1:no
experience’ to ‘7:a lot of experience’). In addition,
we collected information on rater gender and age (in
years).
3.4 Results
Our hypotheses assumed a main effect for layout
(H1) and an interaction effect for layout and profile
gender (H2). We therefore conducted repeated-
measures ANOVAs for the two within-factors layout
and profile gender first for the overall profile rating,
then for the likability of the profile. We report
results using the conservative Greenhouse-Geisser
correction to account for violations of sphericity.
The three layout variations resulted in disparate
perceptions for the overall profile rating, F(2,198) =
8.23, p<.001, η
2
= .04, as well as likability, F(2,198)
= 8.69, p<.001, η
2
= .04. This effect was driven by
higher general ratings and higher likability of
profiles with photos compared to silhouette profiles
(pairwise comparison, p<.001). In contrast profiles
with and without photos were rated equally on both
outcomes measures. Hypothesis 1 was therefore not
supported.
In support of hypothesis 2, we found a
significant interaction between layout and profile
gender, F(2,198)
overall rating
= 36.40, p<.001, η
2
= .16;
F(2,198)
likability
= 42.87, p<.001, η
2
= .18. For both
the general perception and likability, male profiles
were rated more positively and more likable with
photo, while female profiles were rated more
positively and more likable without photo. Profiles
with silhouette images were rated nearly identical
for male and female profiles. The mean rating for
women approached the rating for profiles with
photos, the mean rating for men approached the
rating for the non-photo layout (see Figure 2).
In line with past research (e.g., Oliphant and
Alexander, 1982), we also found an influence of
rater gender on overall attractiveness of the profiles.
In our study women rated profiles more positively
than men, F(1,193) = 7.78, p<.01, η
2
= .04 (M
women
=
5.09, M
men
= 4.77). Rater gender was not significant,
however, for likability ratings, F(1,189) = 2.34, ns.
Age or experience had no significant impact on
profile perceptions for either dependent variable.
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545
Figure 2: Interaction effect of layout and profile.
4 DISCUSSION
The goal of this study was to obtain a better
understanding of online impression formation in
professional settings. Our focus was here on online
profiles, which often provide the first point of
contact in virtual organizations or teams. Guided by
uncertainty reduction theory (Berger and Calabrese,
1975) and the hyperpersonal communication model
(Walther, 1996, 1997) we investigated how the
strength of gender cues influences the perception of
potential team members using an experimental
setting. We found that visual gender cues in online
profiles played a critical role in forming impressions
of people that are unknown, but might become
potential long-term cooperation partners.
In our study we attempted to differentiate
between effects of individual features of a person
and the generalized effect of gender in visual cues.
Overall, our findings suggest that gender in itself has
a stereotyping effect: For female profiles the gender-
marked silhouettes were rated in a similar way as
female profiles with photos. For male profiles, the
silhouette condition led to ratings similar to the non-
photo condition.
This study addresses the theoretical question of
how profile layout, and more specifically visual cues
in zero-history relationships with a possible long-
term focus impact online impression formation. It
thus extends considerations of impression formation
in zero-history encounters into a work-related
setting. It further adds the issues of gender
stereotyping to impression formation with
professional online profiles. The presence or absence
of a photo had no significant influence on profile
ratings. At first glance, the similarity in ratings of
profiles with and without photos seems surprising
and contradicts uncertainty reduction theory as well
as the hyperpersonal model. The similarity could be
explained, however, by the strong interaction effect
between layout and profile gender: men were
consistently rated more positively with photo, while
women were rated more positively without photo.
The opposing trends for female and male profile
thus masked the effect of layout. The use of gender-
marked silhouettes led to similar ratings for men and
women, albeit on the low side.
The photo, silhouette and no-photo conditions
can be seen as a sequence of elimination of
identifying cues. While for men elimination of
identifying visual cues was negative, for women the
complete elimination of personal as well as generic
gender cues resulted in the most positive ratings.
Results for male profiles thus mirror findings
expected under uncertainty reduction theory (Berger
and Calabrese, 1975), i.e., the more identifying
information is available about a man, the more
positively he is perceived.
Male profiles with a silhouette were rated as
negatively as profiles without photo, i.e.,
emphasizing gender had no additional (positive or
negative) impact on the overall evaluation of male
profiles. This suggests that the male gender may still
be considered a ‘default’ value that has little impact
on judgments, instead of a defining characteristic of
a person. For women, a visual reminder of gender
resulted in similarly negative perceptions of the
profile as the fully identifying photo. Our results for
female profiles thus follow predictions of the
hyperpersonal model for computer-mediated
communication (Walther, 1996, 1997).
A possible explanation for the clear negative
effect of visual cues (generic and identifying) on
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546
female profiles may be the activation of
attractiveness stereotypes. In their study on the
willingness to initiate friendship, Wang et al. (2010)
found that attractive and unattractive photos yielded
converse effects in male and female raters: women
were less willing to befriend attractive women and
unattractive men, while men were less willing to
befriend unattractive women and attractive men. In
the no photo condition, male raters were
significantly more positive towards the female
profile than the male profile, whereas women did not
differentiate between the sexes. Our data did not
yield a similar interaction effect between layout,
profile gender and rater gender. A possible
explanation is that attractiveness is still a higher
priority for women than for men – not only for
personal or romantic relationships, but also in
professional contexts. Attractiveness of photos, for
instance, influences the likelihood of being chosen
in hiring decisions (Marlow et al., 1996). This bias is
especially strong – and negative – for unattractive
women. The external rating of the pictures indicated
an average attractiveness of the people depicted.
Perceptions of average attractiveness may thus have
played a role in the lower ratings for women in the
photo condition. Still, attractiveness cannot explain
that female profiles scored as badly in the generic
gender condition with silhouette images as in the
photo condition. The silhouette images provided
anonymity for the individual, but still conveyed
gender information. This suggests that even generic
indicators of gender may trigger gender-stereotypes.
This is in line with findings on gender-marked
avatars and gender-based representations of
computer programs (Lee, 2003, 2004).
4.1 Practical Implications
The gap between the private and the professional in
online environments is continuously shrinking – as
indicated by the increasing use of social media
networks by HR professionals (Davidson et al.,
2011; SHRM, 2011). Our study provides valuable
pointers for individuals how to adapt their profile for
most positive effect, but also tells a cautionary tale
for HR professionals. Professionally-tinted networks
such as LinkedIn allow the creation of personalized
profiles. Although a fixed template is provided, a
person can still decide which information to put
online (e.g., photo or no photo, level of detail on
education and work history, description of personal
interests). Our study suggests that individual choices
on layout and in particular the type of visual cues
may considerably influence the likelihood to be
approached as expert or potential employee (Caers
and Castelyns, 2011).
Our finding that gender-marked silhouette
images led to similar results as photos for women
suggesting that at least part of the results can be
attributed to gender, not attractiveness. This
underlines the importance of stereotyping also in
professional online contexts.
In practical terms our study suggests that the
rules of personal branding (Labrecque et al., 2011)
for men and women may differ considerably,
starting with the inclusion of personal photos,
silhouette images, or the choice to stay anonymous.
When choosing a photo, it seems that women have
to take greater care with the choice of their photo
than men (i.e., choose more attractive pictures) to
reach the same result.
Our study also has implications for organizations
and online service providers. From studies on
traditional CVs we know that layout can be an
important predictor of how capable a candidate is
perceived and thus his or her chance of being
shortlisted for hiring decisions (Arnulf, Tegner and
Larsson, 2010). Our results suggest that layouts in
online profiles may have similar impacts. Online
services often force users to adhere to pre-specified
layouts. Such standard templates, which prescribe
specific layouts such as the presence or absence of
personal photos may, however, systematically
disadvantage certain groups. Service providers
should therefore consider allowing higher flexibility
in profile templates. In the same regard hiring
organizations should be sensitive how their
requirements for the presentation of information
may impact the chances of (potential) employees
(Brown and Vaughn, 2011).
4.2 Limitations and Future Work
While we think that our study provides valuable new
pointers for theory and practice, we are also aware
of several limitations. Firstly, in our study we
considered overall judgments and likability of the
profiles, not selection decisions. In as far as liking
and actual selection may be based on disparate
criteria it is possible that these two processes may
lead to different results. Further studies should thus
include actual choices. Moreover, our sample
consisted of students not HR professionals or actual
team members. Although we chose adult students
with prior working experience, their judgments may
differ from people with a clear HR role. Future
studies should thus consider professionals as well as
investigate in what way job role affects online
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impression formation.
A related question concerns the impact of task
type on the effect of online profiles, especially
considering the consistent gender effect in our study.
The gender-type of task (i.e., tasks that are seen as
either typically ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’) impacts
how competent attractive or unattractive people are
perceived for this job, in that attractiveness is in fact
negative for gender-untypical jobs (Heilman and
Saruwatari, 1979). The instruction in our study was
kept very generic and can thus be considered as
gender neutral. Further investigations of layout
conditions for disparate task types could yield
important insights into interaction between job
content and gender-based online impression
formation.
Our profiles also included information on
hobbies and personal interests. We cannot exclude
that this information impacted attractiveness ratings
in an uncontrolled way, for instance, in case of
gender-typical or untypical hobbies. However,
personal information is not uncommon in online
profiles (e.g., in the form of group memberships,
private statements, or endorsements) or in related
services (e.g., on the Facebook of a LinkedIn user).
How private information in relation to visual gender
cues in online profiles shapes online impression
formation remains an interesting question, also in
light of user profiles in multiple online services.
Another interesting aspect may be the role of
gender for organizational impression formation.
Diversity cues such as race on recruitment websites
influence job seeker’s perceptions of an
organization’s attractiveness (Walker, Feild,
Bernerth and Becton, 2012). Based on our findings,
we suspect that visual presentations of gender might
have a similarly strong effect on initial impression
formations also for organizations. Considering the
growing trend of presenting organizations and
products as ‘personas’, taking a broader view of
gendered online impression formation may help
predict positive or negative reactions in target
groups.
In step with the growing importance of
cyberspace for personal and work life, online
profiles are becoming increasingly elaborate spaces
for self-presentation – including, for instance, logos,
interest groups, links to music bands and videos,
newest statistics of favorite online games, polls,
information on friends and colleagues as well as
professional recommendation. This opens new,
flexible, and elaborate possibilities for online
presentation, which together are likely to have
complex effects on online impression formation. In
particular, in work-related contexts the possibility to
include external endorsements and recommendations
may have a profound impact, similar to ratings in
online shops such as Amazon. While our study
provides pointers on the effects of layout differences
and gender, future studies are needed that include a
more comprehensive view on online profiles.
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