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Motivated to Penalize: Women's Strategic Rejection of Successful Women

New York University, ejp234{at}nyu.edu

Madeline E. Heilman

New York University

Krystle A. Hearns

New York University

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.

Key Words: prescriptive gender stereotypes • penalties for success • norm violation • backlash effects • social comparison • motivated reasoning

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