Brilliance as gender deviance: Gender-role incongruity as another barrier to women's success in academic fields

Abstract

“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.