Character strengths and allyship: Exploring character profiles that position employees to address bias at work

Allyship is typically conceptualized as direct confrontations with bias perpetrators. Conceptualized so narrowly, allyship toward women could be ill-fitting for men with heart-based strengths such as kindness and social intelligence. Using pre-registered person- and variable-centered analyses, we examined how well 10 distinct allyship strategies were perceived as personally good-fitting in an international sample (N = 3,863) of employed men with high gender equity values. ‘Giving credit/deference to women’ and ‘cheerleading for women’s career advancement’ (relationship-building strategies) were rated best-fitting, whereas ‘calling out’ and ‘investing time/effort to support women’ (committed strategies) were worst-fitting. Person-centered analyses revealed that men in our “Good Character” profile (high bravery, fairness, kindness, perspective, and social intelligence) rated both relationship-building and committed strategies as better-fitting than did other men. Exploratory variable-centered analyses indicated that kindness and social intelligence were associated with more allyship strategies than any of the other 22 strengths we tested.