Women start their careers in similar numbers to men but gradually drop out of paths to leadership. Much of the effort to change this has involved coaching women: boosting their confidence, nudging their ambition, teaching them to negotiate harder, or “lean in” a little more. New research led by Wharton PhD student Sophia Pink suggests something simpler works.
The research, co-authored with Wharton professor Katy Milkmanand fellow Wharton PhD student Jose Cerventez, among others, shows that women are more likely to put themselves forward and apply for leadership jobs after seeing one message: Women like them tend to compete less than men. And that gives men the upper hand.
The researchers say the reason is simple. When people hear a negative stereotype about their group, they often want to prove it wrong, a phenomenon known as “stereotype reactance.”
“The idea is a bit like telling someone not to press a red button,” says Pink. “Once you know you’re not ‘supposed’ to do it, you want to more. In this case, being told that people like you fail to compete makes you want to do just the opposite and defy the stereotype.”
A Cost-effective Way to Change Behavior
The research was published in the journal Organization Science in March this year. The study’s authors ran two online experiments and a large field study on a real executive job platform to gather their findings.
In the online trials, women completed a math task, then chose how they wanted to be paid: a small amount for each right answer, or a chance to earn more for strong performance by doing better than someone else in a tournament. Those who were told that women tended to avoid competition, and that this gives men an advantage, were much more likely to choose the higher-risk, higher-reward option — just as often as men.
Then, in the field study, 4,245 women in leadership using AboveBoard — a job site for senior executive roles that is only accessible to those who pre-qualify — saw one of two messages. Some just got general encouragement to apply for more jobs. Others were told that women like them apply for fewer top jobs, and that this gives men the advantage, before they were encouraged to apply for more jobs. The second group applied for 29% more jobs that day.
“It’s an extremely cost-effective thing a company or hiring platform can do,” Pink says. “It’s basically free — a banner ad, an email. But it changes behavior.”
Milkman puts it simply: “This is a small intervention with big potential. It can help at the exact moment when someone might hold back from applying for a job or competing — and it can change that decision.”
Challenging Stereotypes Beyond Women in Leadership
The idea that stereotypes can motivate as well as discourage is not new, but it has not previously been tested at this scale. Reactance theory, first developed in the 1960s, suggests that people push back when they feel their freedom is threatened. The gender-gap message used in the study works because it makes a harmful social norm visible and gives women the chance to challenge it.
Crucially, the message did not hurt anyone’s performance on the math task used in the online experiments (which were designed to dig deeper into the patterns identified on AboveBoard). Women who chose to compete still scored just as well, or in some cases, slightly better after seeing the message. Also, men’s participation either stayed the same or slightly increased — with no meaningful drop.
“This message is not about trying to make women more confident,” Pink says. “It’s about helping them see a harmful social stereotype and choose to go against it.”
Milkman suggests this messaging could be embedded in job boards, promotion systems, or even automated emails. “It’s easy to scale, doesn’t take much time to run, and it’s based on behavioral science,” she says.
However, there are limits to the effect of the message. Most of the increase in job applications happened on the same day women saw it, and the impact faded quickly — with applications among both those who saw the message and those who didn’t dropping sharply after the day the message was displayed.
It’s also not clear whether similar messages would help other underrepresented groups, like first-generation students or racial minorities, since this study only tested communications with women. But the authors hope it sparks new research. If calling out a stereotype can shift behavior here, it may work elsewhere too.
Pink and her co-authors are cautious, but hopeful. “We think the mechanism could work more broadly,” Pink says. “But it needs more testing.”
