Tailoring the intervention to the self: Congruence between self-affirmation and self-construal mitigates the gender gap in quantitative performance

Abstract

There is a gender performance gap in the MBA classroom, in which men perform better than women, particularly in quantitative courses. We examined whether greater congruence between participants’ self-construal levels and the self-affirmation in which they engaged would mitigate the gender performance gap. In Study 1, participants varying in their self-construal levels were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: 1) an individual self-affirmation condition in which they wrote about a value that is important to them, 2) a collective self-affirmation condition in which they wrote about a value that is important to them and their ingroup, and 3) a control condition in which they wrote about a value important to someone else. We found that: 1) the gender performance gap was mitigated among those who individually self-affirmed and 2) the gender performance gap was particularly likely to be diminished under conditions of congruent self-affirmation (when those who were relatively high in independent self-construal engaged in individual self-affirmation and when those who were relatively high in interdependent self-construal engaged in collective self-affirmation). Conceptually analogous results emerged in Study 2 conducted on a considerably larger on-line sample. The discussion centers on: (1) the implications of our findings for the emerging literature on wise interventions, and (2) the practical value of encouraging individuals to engage in self-affirmation to counteract the harmful effects of stereotype-threat.