The effects of professors’ race and gender on student evaluations and performance

Abstract

This experimental study examined the effects of professor gender, professor race, and student gender on student ratings of teaching effectiveness and amount learned. After watching a three-minute engineering lecture presented by a computer-animated professor who varied by gender and race (African American, White), female and male undergraduates (N = 325) completed a 26-question student evaluation form and a 10-question true/false quiz on the lecture content. Contrary to predictions, male students gave significantly higher ratings than female students on most teaching factors and African American professors were rated higher than White professors on their hypothetical interactions with students. Quiz results, however, supported predictions: higher scores were obtained by students who had a White professor compared to those who had an African American professor, and by students who had a male professor compared to those who had a female professor. These results may be due to students paying more attention to the more normative professor. Thus, performance measures may be a more sensitive indication of race and gender biases than student ratings. The limited relationship between student ratings and student learning suggests caution in the former to assess the latter. ********** Student ratings of professors play an extremely influential role in personnel decisions related to hiring, promotion, tenure, and salaries in the U.S. (Cashin, 1999). In a survey completed in 1998 by 4-year liberal arts colleges, 88.1% of schools reported always using student evaluations as a primary method to evaluate teacher performance, a percentage that has continued to increase in recent years (Seldin, 1999). Despite the important role that student ratings of professors play in employment decisions, there still is tremendous uncertainty about what exactly these ratings assess and whether they could reflect student gender and racial biases (Addison, Best, & Warrington, 2006; Basow & Martin, 2012; Reid, 2010; Sprague & Massoni, 2005). The current study examined the effects of professor gender and race on student ratings and performance an experimental design. Social psychological research has documented how a rater's perception of and reaction to another person can be affected by bias, either consciously or unconsciously (Biernat, 2003; Eagly & Karau, 2002; Phelan, Moss-Racusin, & Rudman, 2008.) In particular, gender and race stereotypes may create different expectations for different individuals. For example, because women are expected to be nurturant and caring, a woman's interpersonal skills may be viewed more critically in a rater's overall evaluation than is the case when rating her male counterpart. Furthermore, women and minorities often must work harder to be perceived as equally competent as White men (the normative group), and it is far easier for them to fall from grace as well (Biernat, Fuegen, & Kobrynowicz, 2010; Foschi, 2000). That is, a mistake or negative quality is viewed more negatively when the person being rated is from a minority group than when the person is from the majority/normative group. Thus, the same behavior, such as grading harshly, might be perceived more negatively by students if the professor is a woman or African American or Hispanic (who should be nice and caring) than if the professor is a White man (who has greater legitimacy due to both race and gender). Such indeed seems to be the case. For example, Sinclair and Kunda (2000) found that students responded differentially to negative feedback (low grades) from a professor depending upon whether the professor was a man or a woman. When students received negative feedback from a woman, they rated her as less competent than they did a man. In the student evaluation literature, there is more research on the effects of professor gender than professor race on student ratings, probably because non-White professors are such a minority in the professorate. …

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