Benefit-Finding Improves Well-Being among Women Who Have Experienced Gender Discrimination

Abstract

Women experience gender discrimination in numerous important life domains, which can harm psychological well-being. Benefit-finding—identifying the positive implications of having overcome a negative experience—has been theorized as a coping strategy to improve well-being. We experimentally tested whether prompting women, recruited online, to consider the implications of their past experiences of discrimination for themselves in the present—and the benefit-finding that follows—can improve well-being. U.S women (n = 409) were asked to consider a past experience of sexism in three data collections (Studies 1a, 1b, 1c). In each collection, participants were randomly assigned to a benefit-finding condition or a control condition. Those participants in to the benefit-finding condition were asked to write about the implications or lessons of their experience for the present whereas those women randomly assigned to the control condition did not. A meta-analysis based on the three data collections revealed that participants in the benefit-finding condition reported greater well-being than those in the control, which was a moderately strong effect. In a third collection (Study 1c), we included an additional control condition in which participants wrote about known facts of gender discrimination. We also included measures of sexism perceptions and willingness to engage in collective action. Participants who reflected upon the implications of their past experiences of sexism reported the highest intentions to engage in collective action to confront future sexism (relative to both control conditions). For women coping with discrimination, this intervention can help alleviate the harmful consequences of discrimination and motivate support to fight gender inequality.