“Brilliance,” a state of extreme intellectual ability, is stereotypically associated with men but not women. Research finds that portrayals of brilliance as a prerequisite for success contribute to women's underrepresentation in certain academic fields and high-level positions. In this work, we examined whether gender roles contribute to the perception of women as less brilliant. In four preregistered experimental studies (N = 920), we tested whether brilliance deviates from ascribed and prescribed gender roles more for women than for men and whether such deviation places women who display their brilliance at a higher risk of experiencing backlash. In Study 1, an average intelligent and a brilliant man were rated as more similar on gender-specific traits than an average intelligent and a brilliant woman. In Study 2, while intelligence and gender individually influenced prescriptions of masculinity and femininity, their interaction did not support larger differences for female targets, indicating a lack of differential expectations by gender and intelligence. Study 3 showed that brilliant women are more likely to experience backlash at work than brilliant men, while Study 4 demonstrated that while brilliance enhances professional desirability across genders, it decreases social desirability, suggesting social costs that could affect workplace dynamics. Our results support that brilliance can be considered a form of gender-role deviance for women and might lead to a backlash. This underscores the need for policies to counteract gendered stereotypes of brilliance, which hinder women's career advancement and contribute to the gender gap in the workplace.

中文翻译：

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才华横溢是性别偏差：性别角色不一致是女性在学术领域取得成功的另一个障碍


“才华”，一种极度智力的状态，刻板印象中与男性联系在一起，而不是与女性联系在一起。研究发现，将才华描绘为成功的先决条件会导致女性在某些学术领域和高级职位上的代表性不足。在这项工作中，我们研究了性别角色是否会导致人们认为女性不那么聪明。在四项预先注册的实验研究 （N = 920） 中，我们测试了女性的才华是否比男性更偏离赋予和规定的性别角色，以及这种偏差是否会使展示才华的女性面临更高的反弹风险。在研究 1 中，平均聪明的男性和聪明的男性在性别特异性特征上比普通的聪明和聪明的女性更相似。在研究 2 中，虽然智力和性别分别影响了男性气质和女性气质的规定，但它们的相互作用并不支持女性目标的更大差异，这表明性别和智力缺乏不同的期望。研究 3 显示，才华横溢的女性比才华横溢的男性更有可能在工作中遭到抵制，而研究 4 表明，虽然才华可以提高不同性别的职业期望，但会降低社会期望，表明可能影响工作场所动态的社会成本。我们的结果支持，才华可以被视为女性性别角色偏差的一种形式，并可能导致强烈反对。这凸显了制定政策的必要性，以抵消对才华的性别刻板印象，这种刻板印象阻碍了女性的职业发展，并加剧了工作场所的性别差距。