Can Stereotype Reactance Prompt Women to Compete? A Field Experiment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Pink, Sophia L.; Cervantez, Jose; Kirgios, Erika L.; Chang, Edward H.; Milkman, Katherine L.; Pink, Sophia L.; Cervantez, Jose; Kirgios, Erika L.; Chang, Edward H.; Milkman, Katherine L.
• 署名单位: University of Pennsylvania; University of Chicago; Harvard University
• 刊物名称: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7039
• DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2024.19563
• 发表日期: 2025
• 关键词: reactance; GENDER; stereotypes; COMPETITION; field experiment; leadership

摘要

Women are consistently underrepresented in leadership roles. One contributor may be that women are generally less willing than equally-qualified men to enter competitions (e.g., for jobs or promotions). We draw from research on stereotype reactance-the idea that telling people about stereotyped expectations can encourage defiance-to propose and test whether telling women about the gender gap in competition entry can increase their willingness to compete. Our prediction contrasts with prior work on stereotype threat and descriptive norms suggesting that highlighting the gender competition gap might lead women to refrain from competing. In two incentive-compatible, preregistered online experiments, find that informing women about the gender competition gap increases their likelihood competing for higher pay, and this effect is mediated by stereotype reactance, consistent with our theorizing. Moreover, exposing both men and women to information about the gender competition gap closes the gap. We then test this informational intervention in a large-scale field experiment on an executive job search platform (n = 4,245), examining whether telling women about the gender competition gap increases their willingness to compete for leadership roles relative to a control message that tells them about an identity-irrelevant competition gap. We find that relative to our control message, informing women about the gender gap willingness to compete increases submitted job applications by over 20% on the day of condition assignment. This suggests that women's willingness to compete is affected not just confidence, but also by cultural expectations and motivation to defy stereotypical norms.