title: Motivated to penalize: women's strategic rejection of successful women.
abstract: Two studies tested the hypothesis that females penalize women who succeed in male gender-typed jobs to salvage their own self-views regarding competence. The authors proposed that women are motivated to penalize successful women (i.e., characterize them as unlikable and interpersonally hostile) to minimize the self-evaluative consequences of social comparison with a highly successful female target. Results supported the hypothesis. Whereas both male and female participants penalized successful women, blocking this penalization reduced female--but not male--participants' self-ratings of competence (Study 1). Moreover, positive feedback provided to female participants about their potential to succeed (Study 2) weakened negative reactions to successful women without costs to subsequent self-ratings of competence. These results suggest that the interpersonal derogation of successful women by other women functions as a self-protective strategy against threatening upward social comparisons.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, New York University, NY 10003, USA. ejp234@nyu.edu
authors.forename: Elizabeth J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Parks-Stamm
authors.forename: Madeline E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Heilman
authors.forename: Krystle A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Hearns
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D001290:Attitude; D002322:Career Mobility; D005260:Female; D006791:Hostility; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D009519:New York City; D011287:Prejudice; D012649:Self Concept; D014481:United States; D014495:Universities