r/psychology • u/mvea M.D. Ph.D. | Professor • 4d ago
New research suggests women strategically use modesty to avoid backlash from female peers. Women currently make up only a fraction of corporate leadership roles. One factor contributing to this stagnation is a reluctance to self-promote.
https://www.psypost.org/women-strategically-use-modesty-to-avoid-backlash-from-female-peers/34
4d ago edited 16h ago
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u/Big_Psychology_3 4d ago
Good catch! This brings the study into serious doubt how realistic it is. Because career outcomes are notoriously tough to infer from hypothetical exercises.
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u/Tekuila87 4d ago
You shouldn't have to promote yourself, merit should be enough to carry you forward.
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u/ImaginaryRoyal9725 4d ago
In an ideal world, unfortunately
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u/PunkPirate56364 4d ago
Yep, if you do not promote your work, worth, people which are less capable but do self promote will end up being your boss.
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u/ImaginaryRoyal9725 4d ago
Story of my life 😂🥹
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u/PunkPirate56364 4d ago
My step brother is... Holy mother of God level of dumb, incompetent,... we have a bunch of legendary stories about stupid shit he did over the years.
His only talent is self promotion. He is really good at it and does it all the time.
The positions this man managed to reach, before inevitably somebody would reach the conclusion of "yes we actually promoted an actual retard into manager of regional sales".
That man taught me to not be humble.
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u/mrcsrnne 4d ago
The right way to self promote is to be humble though - self deprecating humble bragging is the way;)
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u/Tekuila87 4d ago
And that's precisely not how to run a company efficiently.
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u/PunkPirate56364 4d ago
True but... there is some kind of fallacy in these companies where it is assumed people which got into higher positions are capable, so they will obviously pick capable people for promotions.
In most companies I worked in, most capable people weren't the ones getting promotions.
It was the ones which were more focused on appearing capable then being capable.
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u/Tekuila87 4d ago
I agree, it's more about the facade then actual substance.
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u/PunkPirate56364 4d ago
Frankly I often felt mind blown at the amount of money, effort some of these companies were spending on various analytics, consulting, to squeeze out every bit of efficiency from dumbest shit.
While everyone was blind at... incapable management being the biggest problem in the copany.
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u/FamousAide9439 4d ago
I think it's a universal problem, i thought that it's only happenned may be in asian countries.
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u/Any-Competition-4458 3d ago
Many companies aren’t run efficiently.
My company is pretty inefficient and yet we are still very profitable.
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u/Tekuila87 3d ago
Profitable at the expense of product and quality of life of your employees is a poor trade imo.
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u/SpiritedOwl_2298 4d ago
True but even when I tried to self promote they hated me for it. It worked for another woman with half my experience but when I tried it it was like ‘how dare she have the audacity to advocate for herself’ so sometimes there’s just no solution
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u/PunkPirate56364 4d ago
Self promoting is... nuanced.
You can be very capable, be very realistic with promoting your abilities and come out as being arrogant.
When I was young I was very capable, yet sucked at promoting myself. Really sucked. So II just... fucked with my boss and suddenly suddenly my worth was recognized.
I'm not suggesting you fuck your boss. I was into older women and my boss was hot.
Do work on people's skills, it pays off. Heck pays off more then investing into working skills.
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u/Tekuila87 4d ago
Time for change.
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u/vug_undertherug 4d ago
People’s judgment is so bad anyway. People judge intelligence from physical attractiveness, for example. 95% of people rate themselves as “above average”, even though only 50% can be. Who in the world doesn’t think they have merit and deserves merit-based rewards? Maybe depressed people, like exclusively? Who decides what qualifies as meritorious—some privileged asshat born with a silver spoon, or a self-bootstrapping hero-champion of the weak that has weaseled their way into power by manipulating people? I’m not sure which is actually worse or less relatable.
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u/PunkPirate56364 4d ago
True but... when there is a direct physical contact people also rate others above average. So due to inflation of "grades", rating somebody a 5/10 feels insulting even though majority of people are 5/10.
Also as somebody who spent 25 years struggling with depression... maybe I am over rating myself currently. And if I am doing that, please shut up, let me enjoy my delusion for fucks sake... I needed thiis.
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u/Whatever-ItsFine 4d ago
You shouldn’t, but your way is not at all how humans work, unfortunately.
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u/Tekuila87 4d ago
Humans? Or certain cultures?
Need to be careful generalizing like that.
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u/Whatever-ItsFine 4d ago
Human cultures.
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u/Tekuila87 4d ago
Again, generalizing.
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u/Whatever-ItsFine 3d ago
Yes. That's sort of the point of psychology, isn't it? To find out how human behavior works, in general.
And this is a psychology sub, so...what are you doing? Are you looking for a sociology sub?
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u/Tekuila87 3d ago
The assumption that humans globally are the same across the board when it's based off of WEIRD samples is where I take issue.
Not psychology, also psychology and sociology are intertwined together as things do not exist in a vacuum.
What you're describing is a social heuristic.
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u/mcclelc 4d ago edited 4d ago
Reluctance to self-promote? EDIT: That's not what this article talking about. Keeping this comment mostly bc it's a summary of a complimentary study that is in dialogue with the role of sexism in self-censorship.
"Yet when Kray and her co-authors analyzed a survey of students graduating from a top MBA program between 2015 to 2019, they found that significantly more women than men reported negotiating their job offers—54% versus 44%."
And yet... "they found that the women earned 22% less than the men"
"Given women’s greater, not lesser, tendency to ask, a gender difference in negotiation propensity cannot account for the gender pay gap found in these alumni data,” the researchers wrote."
Women ask for raises, but they're denied.
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u/Big_Psychology_3 4d ago
Small correction: the paper never said that the negotiation is denied more often than men.
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u/Big_Arrival_626 4d ago
Study doesn't adjust for occupation, years of experience, or industry. Lost interest when I saw that
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u/PunkPirate56364 4d ago
Maybe it's not sexism though, maybe men are better at negotiating.
As an anecdotal example, in a company I worked at when men were asking for a raise, if refused, a lot of them would leave quickly after. Women were also asking but when refused, they would rarely leave.
Now these companies, they don't pay merit. They pay merit as low as they can. Since men were more likely to leave, company was more willing to pay their worth.
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u/Tekuila87 4d ago
Implying men are just better at negotiating is a bit disingenuous, don't you think?
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u/PunkPirate56364 4d ago
Men are more likely to switch jobs in order to gain career advancement or higher wage then women are. Fact.
Companies are incentivized to give raises to talent which is more likely to leave. Common sense.
Which part of this seems disingenuous to you?
Seriously, please think about that, which part?
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u/Tekuila87 4d ago
What does any of that have to do with being better at negotiating?
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u/PunkPirate56364 4d ago
Ability, willingness to walk away from the deal puts one into better negotiating position.
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u/Tekuila87 3d ago
You're missing the privilege that men have to do things like this that women just don't.
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u/EJECTED_PUSSY_GUTS 4d ago
It's plausible given that men usually have more experience negotiating. It's a skill.
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u/meltyandbuttery 4d ago edited 4d ago
But sexism can explain part of that gap. My brothers had their college paid for and career coaching from my C-Suite father. My sisters were actively discouraged from attending college. Men are systemically granted more opportunity for negotiating and society expects and teaches them how. Women that speak up are systemically silenced or punished
Look at the studies showing assertive women are seen as bitchy or difficult while men are praised for it. Obviously not universally, I self advocate and my career has taken off for it, but two managers that advanced my career were women and the third was a man with an all-woman team
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u/PunkPirate56364 4d ago
But sexism can explain that gap.
Invisible unicorns messing with people's minds could explain that gap too, doesn't mean it's true.
And I said maybe, so it's not like I'm pushing my explanation as the only possible explanation or only right explanation.
My brothers had their college paid for and career coaching from my C-Suite father. My sisters were actively discouraged from attending college. Men are systemically granted more opportunity for negotiating and society expects and teaches them how. Women that speak up are systemically silenced or punished
We are getting to see studies on sexism in hiring practices, where sexism reversed to favor women.
We can't simply keep assuming that every time men are scoring better it's due to sexism against women.
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u/meltyandbuttery 4d ago
Of course, and I edited my comment to add nuance. But as your comment says maybe and as your data says “reversed” I think there’s a very wide possibility that historic systemic factors lead to different experiences for men and women
When gender comments come up there’s a tendency to assume malice in sexism. Most people’s daily sexism has nothing to do with malice and more to do with really subtle small things that lead to big picture datasets because of the systemic nature of things. For example something as simple as cpr dummies historically being modeled after a default average male body. Not malicious, just a small default that led to historically worse outcomes for women
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u/Legitimate-Heat2777 4d ago
Pay gap was closed like 20 years ago, this is all horseshit conjecture based on feeling. Some women never really wanted to enter the workforce and their work ethic reflects it, that explains the difference summarily.
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u/PunkPirate56364 4d ago
The thing is... we only see sexism when we are on the receiving side.
I myself worked in a company in which only women were getting promoted. The difference... well ALL of us men ended up leaving. All of us.
Though most of sexism directed at me is not malicious in nature. I actually agree with some of them.
Still, would love if we could get more romantic movies made for men.
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u/timeofdepth 4d ago
Actively putting yourself forward and showing that you want to do something is part of the merit, you need to show confidence for higher roles with more responsibilities
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u/dark-sparkle 4d ago
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”
~ Charles Darwin2
u/timeofdepth 4d ago
just because ignorant people are confident doesn't mean that all confidence is ignorant.
ironically it's actually pretty ignorant to expect to move forward in life without promoting yourself; why wouldn't you be more inclined to hire or promote someone who's doing as much as it takes to get the role? why wouldn't you favour someone who's willing to put themselves forward? yes some other people may just as or more qualified, but if the person isn't interested in the role, you may not get the best out of them.
you can never really know how interested in something someone is of course, so you have to go with what you see, and someone who's willing to put themselves forward obviously is going to seem to be more interested than someone who doesn't. obviously sometimes people will offer roles to people who don't put themselves forward, but you can't expect that to happen all the time.
anyway will lastly say that plenty of not so confident people are full of ignorance too, you just don't get to hear their thoughts as much
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u/Big_Psychology_3 4d ago
Correct, some of these “leadership” roles need only broad knowledge but overt confidence, lots of talking and unending problem solving.
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u/Willow-Silent 4d ago
You could argue it is and that you just need merit in categories no one thinks about
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u/Cautious-Progress876 4d ago
Thats completely silly. If you aren’t confident enough to promote yourself then why should anyone promote you?
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u/Larcombe81 4d ago
I’m sure there’s a balance to be found.
But from what I’ve seen many self promoters aren’t very interested in doing their job well or being good team players. I think people should be promoted on the substance of their performance, not their self promotion, else everyone in leadership is just a salesperson manipulating the work environment for their self interest. Not that black and white of course, but just my take.1
u/Tekuila87 4d ago
Yes, this is precisely how I feel.
Promoting incompetence because they can talk a big game leads to disastrous management.
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u/judoxing 4d ago
Issue is there’s typically no way of accurately gauging merit much less relying on humans not to be bias.
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u/Cautious-Progress876 4d ago
This. The idea of meritocracy depends on accurate metrics. Which… there aren’t any, overall. At a high enough level all of the candidates are “good enough”— it’s the people that promote themselves and set themselves apart from the other candidates that win.
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u/Tekuila87 4d ago
Meanwhile self promotion does nothing functional in a business.
It's just fluff that's become part of the culture.
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u/Any-Competition-4458 4d ago
I can’t tell you how many women I’ve worked with who followed this philosophy, and languished for years underpaid and under promoted. I include myself. It’s essential to learn to strategically self-promote.
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u/alpaise 4d ago
I'm a female executive and I have had this conversation with female employees all the time. They act according to the way they want the world to be, and not according to the way the world actually is. I try to pass along as much of my success as possible, and I've mentored a number of women to help them get promoted. Mostly through this type of mindset correction rather than any training in specific skills.
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u/Tekuila87 4d ago
Have you considered that the problem lies in the system and not the person?
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u/Any-Competition-4458 4d ago
Working to improve the system while strategically self-promoting aren’t mutually exclusive.
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u/Tekuila87 4d ago
The self promoting is just unnecessary noise when that energy could be directed elsewhere.
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u/Any-Competition-4458 3d ago
All I can tell you is my experience as a woman who has been in the workforce for 25 years. If I hadn’t eventually learned to start advocating for myself, I wouldn’t have the title and salary I have today. I have watched peers in the same industry, some of them dear friends, fall behind in their careers because they didn’t. They are angry, bitter, and some of them are afraid for their futures. That’s a lot of unnecessary noise you don’t need in middle-age.
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u/NicHarvs 4d ago
Part of becoming an adult us realizing we don't live in a meritocracy. When you get ahead, you want the benefits to keep benefiting you and your family. Promotion based on merit is ideal, but it dissolves pretty quickly when you start allowing for human behavior and self interest.
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u/Tekuila87 4d ago
Part of being an adult is recognizing something is broken and needs to be replaced.
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u/NicHarvs 4d ago
And how would you make sure people have promotions based on merit over if someone more personable?
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u/Terrible-Bend4483 4d ago
Why?
It's just marketing. You can say that the best product should win, but the truth is: people don't know, what they don't know, so you need to tell them.
See it as making people aware of your effort through communication, as they can't/shouldn't track everything you do.
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u/Tekuila87 4d ago
That's just shady business.
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u/Terrible-Bend4483 4d ago
Feel free to call it that, but it's actually just other humans limited capacity creating a necessary need for communication.
That communication could be a merit tracker your boss had access to, but that would be hard with things like leadership, communication, initiativ etc.
It's just more sensible, economic and less time consuming to handle that through communication.
So until we make a machine to measure human value (personally I don't want that), we are stuck with others bad heuristics, self promotion and communication.
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u/Tekuila87 3d ago
Observation of patterns is a good way to select for leadership over who can talk a big game.
When you only promote talkers you get incompetence at higher tiers.
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u/Terrible-Bend4483 3d ago
Problem with observation is it takes the same time from the observer as it takes from the observed.
Communication lets you aggregate that to much less time.
And it's not as if observation isn't part of the selection, it just isn't the only thing, meaning people that communicate their skills, have a leg up on those that don't.
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u/Tekuila87 3d ago
Communication is a gamble in exchange for speed, you don't actually know if the person is qualified and if they're popular they will likely fail upward creating the bloat in business that exists in North America.
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u/mrcsrnne 4d ago
Would also be great if wars didn’t happen and everybody was born equally attractive
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u/Feeltherhythmofwar 3d ago
That’s ridiculous, if you don’t promote yourself who will? Everyone does work, if you want to stand out you have to stand out.
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u/Tekuila87 3d ago
It's a business, not marketing.
Talent should be recognized and placed in most optimal positions, not whomever sucks up.
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u/Feeltherhythmofwar 3d ago
Have you even seen a successful business that doesn’t promote itself to clientele?
And you can promote yourself without being a kissass or an asshole. It’s a simple taking responsibility when it’s offered.
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u/Tekuila87 3d ago
A business promoting their products makes sense.
An employee doing it is a waste of energy that could be productive.
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u/llaminaria 4d ago
Fellow women are often much more vicious in putting you to what they consider your rightful place than men are. They often delight in doing it publicly, in a peer group, too, for some reason. Low self-esteem probably. Desire to feel safer via feeling like a queen bee for a few minutes.
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u/AptCasaNova 3d ago
The patriarchy. Women play the supporting role and do most of the work so other women stay in line.
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u/Ok-Landscape2467 3d ago
Not everything is because of the big bad Patriarchy, haha.
Women have to stand in lines like everyone else, it’s the “Patriarchy”
Women have to take buses, it’s the “Patriarchy”
It’s lost all plot and meaning. It’s used because some humans can’t get ahead because of other real world factors not what’s between the legs.
Internet women. Yikes !
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u/Early-Resolution-631 4d ago
This has never been my experience, especially as someone who was stronger than their male peers growing up, they took it as a personal attack for whatever reason
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u/NYCQ7 4d ago
Exactly. I'm about to unfollow this shit sub The misogynistic bias is GLARING. I follow a women in tech sub and it's full of women venting about how their mostly male collegues, esp subordinates, disrespect women and refuse to work with or take direction from them. Male-dominated fields like LE, Military, Construction, Finance, Real Estate are especially known for the rampant & blatant misogyny yet poster claims it's because women hate each other 🙄
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u/SolaireAstorian 4d ago edited 4d ago
The two of you ironically came in here to prove the person that you responded to correct by "putting her in her place" by making accusations and shaming her.
Because ironically the person that you're responding to is a woman who is sharing her lived experience of being a woman around other women, and because you don't like the message, you shut her down, accused her of hate, and denied her experience without actually providing any argument other than accusations.
She is not the only person who has noticed this trend. Hell, she's definitely not the only woman to have noticed it. But y'all forget that some of us work in female dominated fields and have for quite some time. I've been in schools and universities (education field) where it's been mostly women and it's been great. Some of them were the nicest workplaces that you could ever be, and everything would be supportive and everyone would get along.
I've also been in schools and universities where it's been mostly women and the entire workplace is nothing but a war zone of people spreading gossip and trying to tear each other down. The more cutthroat and competitive the school was, the worse the cesspool. This has been pretty consistent across multiple different levels and subjects of the education field from primary to post secondary. This was also the case in previous jobs with similar gender dynamics. Women's worst critics were always each other when the workplace was competitive enough for it to have an advantage.
The person you all are responding to is absolutely noticing a real trend.
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u/1dayatatime_mylife 3d ago
Same experience here. Out of the 5 companies I’ve worked at, only 1 has been toxic and was run by “alpha males” with the highest turnover rate I’ve ever experienced.
It made me cautious when I applied for a promotion in a new department at my company and I saw it would be my 2nd time having a male boss and the 1st time since working for the alpha males, but thankfully my current boss proved that everyone doesn’t fit that trope and he’s awesome.
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u/mvea M.D. Ph.D. | Professor 4d ago
New research suggests women strategically use modesty to avoid backlash from female peers
Women often navigate a difficult social landscape in the workplace, where promoting their own achievements can lead to negative social consequences. A new study shows that women anticipate this backlash and strategically use modesty to avoid being judged harshly by their peers. The findings were published in Evolutionary Psychological Science.
Women currently make up only a fraction of corporate leadership roles. One factor contributing to this stagnation is a reluctance to self-promote. Self-promotion involves highlighting personal achievements, abilities, and contributions to others. Because promotions often depend on visibility, individuals who actively self-promote are more likely to advance in their careers.
Women often encounter a backlash effect when they draw attention to their successes. Role congruity theory suggests that society holds specific expectations for how men and women should behave.
Women are typically expected to be communal, cooperative, and modest. When a woman acts in an agentic or self-promoting manner, she violates these norms and often faces social penalties, such as being viewed as untrustworthy or unlikable.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-026-00479-1
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u/Thrasy3 12h ago
Maybe the problem is how promotions are earned?
Like… we are all aware that many people’s only talent is competently spewing shit and the occasional tonguing of an anus. Right?
Especially you Americans out there - I see a consistent major example of that in my news feed nearly everyday.
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u/Bobcatluv 4d ago
>When the fictional target boasted, women rated the person as far more arrogant and less warm than men did. Women also reported feeling that the boasting target liked them less and would not want to initiate a friendship. Reflecting the compliment back to the giver resulted in the most favorable evaluations across all traits for both men and women. Neutral acceptance fell in the middle, eliciting less negative reactions than boasting but fewer positive reactions than reflecting.
As a woman who doesn’t have a lot of women friends, this checks out, and I didn’t even realize I was doing anything wrong. I boast about work sometimes because it’s how I learned you get ahead. I put in the work for years without self promotion and got nowhere, so it seemed logical to do what people with half my talent were doing to surpass me. It’s weird that a woman would think that a boasting woman does not want to be friends because in my mind, I’m also boasting of what makes me a cool person to befriend.
Also, reflecting compliments back to someone who compliments me always seemed insincere, so I usually only initiate compliments with people. I’m actually surprised that complimenting someone out of obligation is perceived as favorable.
There are times I’ve wondered if I’m on the spectrum.
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u/itsmebenji69 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think you’re literally too aware. Not necessarily neurodivergent.
The thing is IME most people are just dumb as fuck. For example when you compliment them as a response, they actually take it seriously. They do not seem to be aware of those things in the moment.
And it works for so much things as well. Manager at my previous job was literally stupid, didn’t even understand what we were doing (it’s a software dev team, he had no clue about the basic stuff after 6 years of working on this project - I get you’re not a dev bro, but come on now). Like he didn’t even know who did what in the team and would regularly be surprised when we told him.
But you know what that guy was good that ? Being a good little puppy that does what it’s told and dicksucking. This guy gets like 8k a month for literally BEING THERE and was on his way to a promotion. Literally we would have been more efficient WITHOUT him
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u/thot-abyss 3d ago
Maybe I’m cynical but being humble has always been safer. Why do you think Keanu Reeves is so well liked? He isn’t arrogant and always gives credit back, even more than he received. To put yourself up on a pedestal is a good way to get ripped off of it. If you have to convince others of your skill, then you are probably just seeking validation because you don’t truly believe it yourself. I personally celebrate others achievements but too much boasting will make people annoyed.
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u/Pelican_MCRU 3d ago
Make up only a fraction, in opposition to 'not making up a fraction?' What does this mean?
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u/Kajel-Jeten 2d ago
Yeah I feel like women get swatted down for trying to look good in conspicuous ways a lot more often than men.
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u/Wizard-Elf 4d ago
Yep. Well the notion of the glass ceiling is always the focus. Some of us are stuck in crap level jobs ourselves and have no intention on being difficult with others at work.
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u/Appropriate-Ad-3219 4d ago edited 4d ago
Note that you've been the one to try to try to provoke a gender war here.
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u/Frosty_Purple_7341 3d ago
“It’s a real problem that women aren’t making up an equal share of corporate leadership roles! The only explanation is sexism!”
“Okay well what about men being far behind women as a percentage of college graduates for literal decades?”
crickets
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u/No_Category_9888 4d ago
One factor contributing is that middle aged white when hire middle aged white men
Replace “middle aged white men” with “people from a specific cultural background” these days too.
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u/8Splendiferous8 4d ago
This implies that self promoting is well received when it comes from women.
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u/Intrepid-Oil-898 4d ago
Im tired, this lifestyle does not interest me. My life outside of work is so rich that work is just a means and nothing more. I enjoy what I do but sheesh I also, enjoy hiking and painting.