what's fine for the gander isn't always good for the goose: sex differences in...

Sex Roles, Vol. 7, No. 9, 1981

What's Fine for the Gander Isn't Always Good

for the Goose: Sex Differences in Self-Confidence

as a Function of Ability Area and Comparison

with Others 1

Ellen Lenney 2

University of Maine at Orono

Previous investigators have suggested that women display lower self-confidence than men across almost all achievement situations. The empirical validity o f this suggestion is assessed in an experiment testing the following hypotheses: (1) Sex differences in self-confidence depend upon the particular ability area. (2) Women's self-confidence is more influenced than men's by characteristics o f the particular individual with whom they compare themselves. Undergraduates completed verbal, interpersonal perceptiveness, spatial-mechanical, and creativity subtests. After each subtest, subjects estimated both their own score and that of the average undergraduate, the average male undergraduate, or the average female undergraduate. Self-confidence was operationally defined in terms o f how favorably subjects compared their work to that o f their peers. As predicted, women's self-confidence was lower than men's in only the spatial-mechanical and creativity subtests; and for women, but not for men, self-confidence depended upon which peer was specified. It is concluded that situation variables do determine sex differences in self-confidence and that women's self-confidence may be unduly affected by situation-specific comparison cues.

1 The preparation of this article was supported in part by a Doctoral Dissertation Fellow- ship in Women's Studies awarded to the author by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellow- ship Foundation. Some portions of the study reported in this article were presented at the Western Psychological Association 1976 Convention (Lenney, Note 1) and were briefly abstracted in another article (Lenney, 1977). The author wishes to express her deep ap- predation to Walter Mischel and to Sandra Bern for their invaluable consultations on the writing of this article.

2Correspondence should be sent to Ellen Lenney, Department of Psychology, University of Maine, Orono, Maine 04469.

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0360-0025 /81 /0900-0905503 .00 /0 © 1981 PLenum Publishing Corporat ion

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"All the pursuits of men are the pursuits of women also, but in all of them, a woman is inferior to a man," Plato proclaimed. Nowadays, we know better. Un- fortunately, Plato was born a few thousand years too early to benefit from modern research evidence indicating that the sexes are equal in overall intellec- tual and academic ability (e.g., Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974). However, with the alteration of just a few words, Plato's assertion would be an empirically accurate statement even today: In almost all "pursuits," a woman is far less likely to achieve at high levels than a man (e.g., Economic Report of'the President, 1973, pp. 155-159; Roby, 1973).

If women's abilities are not inferior to men's, why then do women actually achieve less? Clearly, society still imposes numerous important and effective "external" barriers to women's achievement efforts. This article will focus upon an "internal," or psychological, process among women which may greatly con- tribute to their underachievement. Across a wide range of situations, women's self-confidence, defined in terms of both their performance expectancies and their self-evaluations of ability and completed performances, is lower than men's (Lenney, 1977). Such low self-evaluations are very likely to limit women's capacity to achieve, since individuals who hold low estimates of their ability are likely to perform less well than those with higher estimates (e.g., Battle, 1965; Feather, 1966; Diggory, 1966), are likely to avoid achievement situations or to select less demanding ones, and are more likely to give up in the face of failure (e.g., Weiner, Frieze, Kukla, Reed, Rest, & Rosenbaum, 1972).

How prevalent is this sex difference in self-confidence? Most writers (e.g., Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974; Frieze, Parsons, Johnson, Ruble, & Zellman, 1978) have suggested that women are lower in self-confidence than men in almost all achievement settings. Recently, however, a different assessment of the preva- lence of women's low self-confidence has been made. Lenney (1977), in her comprehensiv~ review of the literature, found evidence that women do not make lower self-evaluations than men in all situations; instead certain types of situation variables appear to influence whether sex differences in self-confidence appear.

The resolution of this debate will have critical implications for the concep- tualization of women's frequently low self-confidence. For example, if women are indeed lower in self-confidence than men regardless of differences among situations, then attempts to improve females' self-evaluation should focus upon certain broadly generalized maladaptive attributes or personality dispositions within women. On the other hand, if women's lower self-confidence is attribu- table to the operation of clearly specifiable variables in achievement settings, then programs to raise their self-evaluations should focus not on situation-free attributes of women themselves, but upon a precise determination of what aspects of achievement situations produce women's "problems" in self-confidence.

Sex Differences in Self-Confidence 907

Unfortunately, the literature does not contain the evidence needed to re- solve this debate. In particular, there has been a notable lack of studies designed directly to assess the impact of specific situation variables upon sex differences in self-confidence. Instead, as Lenney (1977) noted, "the influence of these variables must, for the most part, be inferred by comparing results across studies rather than between conditions within studies. Such a method of inference may indicate the general kinds of variables which are important, but it does not permit a precise understanding of the nature of these variables" (p. 11).

The present study is designed to begin filling this gap in the literature by testing two predictions concerning the impact of selected situation variables upon sex differences in self-confidence. Before these specific predictions are presented, it is important to note that this study employs a kind of achievement setting which has not received research attention to date: conditions under which individuals have completed an achievement task, but have not received any clear indications of the quality of their finished work. The following section briefly describes the reasons why certain sex differences are expected to appear under such conditions, and notes the relevance of these conditions to naturalistic settings.

Sex Differences in Self-Confidence Following Completion of an Achievement Task

Lenney (1977) reviewed evidence that the sexes are unlikely to differ in self-confidence in situations which provide subjects with objective and unam- biguous indications of their task-relevant abilities. Yet she concluded that sex differences in self-confidence are found in the overwhelming majority of studies in which subjects must state their performance expectancies without having any objective or clear information on their task-specific ability. For example, such sex differences typically appear when subjects state how well they expect to do on tasks with which they are unfamiliar.

Unfortunately, the literature relevant to the effect of ambiguous performance information or feedback does not indicate whether women evaluate their finished work less favorably than men in situations where they lack objective information on their abilities or performances. However, the potential im- portance of any such sex difference is clear. During many achievement activities, individuals must finish a project or other piece of work without obtaining objective feedback on its quality. Further, individuals' opinions of their completed work may be important in determining whether they behave in the manner required to achieve success in such activities. For example, the individual who be- lieves that he or she has written a manuscript poorly may be easily discouraged from taking such important actions as submitting his or her work for publica-

908 Lenney

tion. Given the potentially negative consequences for women if they evaluate their completed work less favorably than men, this study is designed to determine whether such a sex difference appears, even in a situation where men and women actually perform no differently.

As noted above, two situation variables are expected to moderate sex differences in self-confidence under conditions in which individuals complete an achievement task without clear feedback on their performances. Specifically, it is predicted that the nature of such sex differences will depend upon (1) the particular abifity area represented by an achievement task and (2) the particular person to whom individuals are asked to compare themselves.

Prediction 1: The lnfluence of Various Ability Areas upon Sex Differences in Self-Confidence. Several studies (e.g., Stein, PoNy, & Mueller, 1971 ; Deaux & Farris, Note 2) indicate that the sexes generally do not differ in self-confidence on tasks which are explicitly presented as "feminine," but that women are lower in self-confidence than men on tasks which are explicitly presented as "masculine." The current literature does not address the following question: Does a similar pattern of sex differences also occur when a task's "sex typing" is not manipulated by explicit labels of "masculine" or "feminine," but is implicit in the task (e.g., through widely shared cultural stereotypes and/or actual performance norms)? Accordingly, the present study tests the prediction that the sexes will not differ in self-confidence on tasks for which general performance norms and/or cultural stereotypes suggest a greater female ability, but women will be lower in self-confidence than men on tasks for which general performance norms and/or cultural stereotypes suggest either a greater male ability or no sex difference in ability.

Specifically, subjects in the present study complete an achievement test which consists of four subtests covering different ability areas: verbal skills, interpersonal perceptiveness skills, spatial-mechanical visualization skills, and creative skills. It is predicted that women will not express lower self-confidence than men either in the verbal test, which represents a skill area for which both performance norms (e.g., Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974) and cultural stereotypes (e.g., Frieze et al., 1978) suggest a greater female ability; or in the interpersonal perceptiveness test, which represents a skill area generally perceived as stereo- typically feminine (e.g., Broverman, Broverman, Clarkson, Rosenkrantz, & Vogel, 1970; Bern, 1974). However, it is predicted that women will express lower self-confidence than men in the spatial-mechanical test, which represents a skill area for which both performance norms (e.g., Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974) and cultural stereotypes (e.g., Broverman et al., 1970; Frieze et al., 1978) suggest a greater male ability; and perhaps also in the creativity test, which represents a skill area in which the sexes perform equally well (especially when verbal fluency is controlled as in the present experiment; e.g., Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974) and for which cultural stereotypes do not show consistent sex bias (e.g., Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974, Frieze et al., 1978).


Prediction 2: The Influence of Comparison Cues upon Sex Differences in Self-Confidence. The results of a few studies in the literature (see Lenney, 1977, for a full discussion) indirectly suggest the intriguing possibility that women's self-confidence may actually be more labile and more dependent than men's upon certain characteristics of others in their social environment during an achievement task (e.g., Feather & Simon, 1971 ; Wyer, Henninger, & Wolfson, 1975). While this evidence indicates that women's self-confidence may fluctuate more than men's in response to changes in certain social cues, it is unclear what specific social cues might produce this instability. Accordingly, the present study provides the first direct test of the hypothesis that women's self-confidence is less stable than men's, and is more subject to the impact of such social cues as the gender and ability level of others to whom individuals compare their own achievement performances. Furthermore, if the hypothesis of greater female responsivity is supported, an examination of the pattern of women's responses will permit inferences concerning the particular aspects of social cues exerting such an effect.

In order to address these issues, after subjects in the present study complete each of the test sections listed above, they are asked to make private estimates of both their own performance in that section and of the performance of one of three peers: "the average undergraduate" (sex unspecified), "the average male undergraduate," or "the average female undergraduate." It is predicted that the specific peer to whom subjects compare themselves will influence the level of women's, but not of men's, self-confidence.

While it is predicted that women will be significantly more responsive than men to the social cues employed in this study, existing evidence does not permit prediction of the pattern of women's responsivity. At least two patterns are possible. First, if women's self-confidence fluctuates in response to their assumptions regarding their peers' ability, then, within each skill test, women's self-confidence will be lower when comparing themselves to the peer for whom stereotypes suggest a high ability (e.g., when comparing their spatial-mechanical performance to that of a male peer) than when comparing themselves to the peer for whom stereotypes suggest a low ability (e.g., when comparing their spatial- mechanical performance to that of a female peer). Second, it is possible that a less complex pattern will occur: If, for example, women's self-confidence fluctuates in response only to the gender of the comparison person, then, within all skill areas, women's self-confidence may be lower when they compare themselves to a male peer than when they compare themselves to a female peer.

At this point, it is important to note the manner in which self-confidence is measured in this study. Subjects are asked to estimate their own work relative to that of another specifically in order that self-confidence may be operationally defined in terms of how favorably subjects believe that their work compares to that of others. This definition of self-confidence is designed to reflect the fact that judgments of the quality of one's work in most naturalistic achievement

910 Lenney

settings are necessarily comparative. In the majority of achievement situations, absolute measures of the adequacy of one's performance do not exist. There- fore, one's self-confidence often depends upon whether one feels that one's work is as good as, better than, or worse than, that of others. For example, in order to evaluate their own score on an examination as either "good" or "bad," students must determine how favorably their score compares with those of other students taking the test. Accordingly, in this study, high self-confidence is indicated if subjects estimate their own score above that of their peers, and low self- confidence is indicated if they estimate their own score below that of their peers.

In summary, the present study is designed to determine the nature of sex differences in postperformance self-confidence in a situation where clear information on the quality of individuals' work is not available. This experiment also determines the influence of four different ability areas upon such sex differences. Finally, by varying whether subjects are asked to compare their own work in each ability area to that of "the average undergraduate," "the average male undergraduate," or "the average female undergraduate," this study determines whether women's self-confidence is more influenced than men's by the specific nature of these social comparison cues. The full study, therefore, represents a 2 (Sex of Subject) × 4 (Ability Subtests) X 3 (Peer Performance Estimates) de- sign, with ability subtests repeated.

METHOD

Development of the Achievement Task

Questions from the four skill areas listed earlier were pretested to insure that (1) subjects would be uncertain about the accuracy of their answers, and clear performance feedback would therefore not be available; and (2) in any subtest where a true test score could be determined, the actual performance achieved by males and females would not differ.

Seventeen male and 15 female Stanford University undergraduates, none of whom served as subjects in the actual study, participated in mixed-sex group pretesting sessions and received experimental credit in their introductory psychology courses. Pretest subjects completed a measure consisting of four separate parts. The general types of questions contained in each part are described below.

1. Verbal Subtest. This section consisted of three kinds of multiple choice questions which had been selected from College Entrance Examination (CEEB) Board files:3 (a) antonyms, (b) analogies, and (c) sentence completions.

3 The CEEB questions used in this study were selected from those used by WaUach, Kogan, and Bern (1964) and will not appear on any future CEEB test.


2. Spatial-Mechanical Visualization Subtest. This section consisted of two kinds of questions: (a) multiple choice "Block Counting" problems (selected from College Entrance Examination fries), which required subjects to count the total number of regularly shaped blocks in a pile of blocks, and (b) "Form Board" problems (Educational Testing Service, 1962), which required subjects to select geometric forms which could be fitted together to complete a given shape.

3. Interpersonal Perceptiveness Subtest. This section consisted of three kinds of questions: (a) problems which asked subjects to indicate which of two suicide notes (selected from Schneidman & Farberow, 1957) was authentic; (b) problems which asked subjects to indicate which of two paragraphs (actually written by this author) had been written by a person of a certain description (e.g., the one which had been written by a male); and (c) problems which asked subjects to indicate which of two drawings (selected from Kellogg, 1970) had been made by a child of a certain description (e.g., the one which had been drawn by a child whose parents had recently separated).

4. Creativity Subtest. This section consisted of three kinds of "divergent thinking ''4 problems in which the subject was asked to generate (a) unusual uses for an object, (b) interesting similarities between pairs of objects, and (c) objects or actions which simple line drawings might represent.

After answering each question, pretest subjects indicated on a 5-point scale, ranging from "1" or "very unsure" to "5" or "very sure," how certain they were that their answer was correct, or, in the creativity section, was creative.

Sureness ratings were examined to select questions for which subjects were relatively unsure of their answers. A question was selected only if the distributions of sureness ratings made by men and women were quite similar and contained very few ratings of "very sure." For problems which required subjects to choose among two or more alternative answers, a question was selected only if subjects who chose one of the alternatives were no more sure of their answers than subjects who chose the other alternative(s).

Finally, since questions in the verbal and spatial-mechanical sections actually had "correct" answers, an additional criterion was applied in order to insure that subjects could easily either overestimate or underestimate their actual scores in these subtests: Both male and female subjects had to respond correctly to approximately half of the items which composed the final verbal and spatial- mechanical sections.

According to these criteria, 15 verbal questions were chosen for inclusion in the final test: 4 antonyms, 4 analogies, and 7 sentence completions. For inclusion in the spatial-mechanical section, 12 items were selected: 6 of each of the "Block Counting" and "Form Board" problems. For the interpersonal percep-

4 For a discussion of "divergent thinking" problems as tests of creativity, see Wallach and Kogan (1965).

912 Lenney

tiveness section, 9 items were selected - of each of the three types pretested. For the creativity section, 9 items were selected: Subjects in the actual study were required to give three responses to one question of each of the three types pretested.

Over the items selected for this test, pretest subjects were unsure of their answers, regardless of what response they had made. In no subtest did more than 9% of all the sureness ratings made by subjects of either sex indicate that a subject was "very sure" of a given answer. Further analyses of pretest ratings showed no sex difference in overall sureness in any subtest. Finally, pretest males and females achieved a very similar average performance. Among the questions selected for the verbal subtest, males correctly answered 44% of the items and females correctly answered 47% of the items; among the questions selected for the spatial-mechanical subtest, males correctly answered 49% of the items and females correctly answered 48% of the items.

Subjects and Procedure

Sixty male and 60 female Stanford University undergraduates served as subjects in this study. Approximately two-thirds of the subjects of each sex received experimental credit in introductory psychology, while the remainder of the subjects were paid volunteers.

Experimental sessions were approximately 75 minutes in length, and were each attended by both males and females. There was a total of 15 group sessions, which ranged in size from 3 to 17 subjects and had an average group size of 9 subjects. In no session did one sex of subject comprise less than 33% of the group members.

When they arrived for their experimental session, subjects were given brief instructions by one of two female experimenters, who explained that the study was designed to determine how well Stanford students performed in several ability areas, and who assured subjects of the anonymity and confidentiality of their responses.

Each subject then received a test booklet containing the verbal, interpersonal perceptiveness, spatial-mechanical, and creativity subtests in one of eight counterbalanced orders. After answering all problems in a given subtest, subjects were asked to respond to three questions concerning their reactions to that section. They were first asked to rate, on a 5-point scale, their "immediate feeling right now about how well you performed in this section." Scale point "1" was labeled "I feel very good about my performance." Subjects were then asked to make a private estimate of their own performance in that section; they were asked to estimate as accurately as possible the number of problems that they had answered correctly in that section (or "uniquely and creatively" in the creativity section). Finally, subjects were asked to estimate the performance of one


of three peers: one-third of the subjects of each sex were asked to estimate the number of correct (or creative) answers given by the "average undergraduate" in each test section; while two-thirds of the subjects o f each sex were asked to make this estimate for the "average female undergraduate" in two of their test sections, and for the "average male undergraduate" in the other two sections: These male and female peer estimates were asked in four counterbalanced orders, independent of the order of sections.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Since the distributions of subjects' responses to many of the dependent measures in this study were markedly skewed or bimodal, all data were analyzed using nonparametric statistics. Further, because the pattern of results was expected to depend upon the specific ability area, the data were analyzed separately for each test section. Since results did not differ between the two experimenters or between paid and unpaid volunteer subjects, data were collapsed across these variables.

The Actual Performance o f Males and Females

As in pretesting, the sexes did not differ in performance in either the verbal or the spatial-mechanical subtests. That is, women correctly answered 43.1% s of the verbal items, and men correctly answered 41.3% of the verbal items (z = .35, p = .73). 6 Furthermore, in the spatial-mechanical subtest, women correctly answered 38.6% of the test items, and men correctly answered 43.3% of the items (z = t.44, p = .15).

Tests o f Prediction 1 : Sex Differences in Self-Confidence in Each o f the Four Ability Subtests

It will be recalled that self-confidence is operationally defined in this study in terms of how favorably subjects compare their own work to that of their peers. Specifically, the measure o f self-confidence used in this study is a difference score computed for each subject by subtracting their estimate of the given peer's performance from their estimate of their own performance. Thus, if a difference score is positive, subjects estimated that they had performed better than

s All data reported are means. 6 All z scores were obtained from Mann-Whitney U tests. All probability values reported

are two-tailed.

914 Lenney

Table I. Self-Confidence Difference Scores Collapsed Across Sex of Peer (Own Estimate Minus Peer Estimate, in Percentage Points)

Ability section Males Females z value

Verbal subtest -14.5 -12.7 .54 Interpersonal perceptiveness subtest - .2 1.5 .48 Spatial subtest - 5.8 -12.5 2.26 a Creativity subtest 5.3 - 1.9 2.68 b

ap =.02. bp =.007.

their peers; and if a difference score is negative, subjects estimated that they had performed worse than their peers. Because the four subtests contained varying numbers of problems, difference scores within each section are expressed in terms of the average percentage of problems more or less than their peers which subjects estimated that they themselves had answered correctly.

Table I displays mean self-confidence difference scores for both males and females in each of the four test sections. In Table I difference scores are collapsed across the three kinds of peers to whom subjects compared themselves. It was predicted that women would not express lower self-confidence than men in the verbal ability subtest or in the interpersonal perceptiveness subtest, but would express lower self-confidence than men in the spatial-mechanical ability subtest and probably in the creativity subtest. This prediction was supported.

As Table I indicates, the sexes did not differ in self-confidence in the two sections which were most female oriented: In the verbal ability section both sexes estimated their own performance below that o f their peers and did not differ in the extent to which they did so. (Given the criteria by which questions were selected in pretesting, the fact that both sexes felt that they had solved fewer problems than their peers probably indicates that the test was unusually difficult for subjects in this population.) Further, in the interpersonal perceptiveness section both sexes estimated that they had done approximately as well as their peers.

However, the sexes did differ in self-confidence in the remaining two sections o f the test. In the spatial-mechanical ability section, compared to men, women estimated that their performance fell over twice as far below that of their peers. In the creativity subtest, males estimated that they had creatively answered more of the items than their peers; but women estimated that they had creatively answered fewer of the items than their peers.

The results presented above emerged from analyses in which self-confidence difference scores were collapsed across the kinds of peers. When self-confidence difference scores were analyzed separately for sex differences among


subjects who had compared themselves to each of the three different peers, the results had a similar basic pattern. That is, no sex differences in self-confidence relative to any individual peer were found in either the verbal or the interpersonal perceptiveness subtests; but in both the spatial-mechanical and creativity subtests women did compare themselves less favorably than men to one of the three peers.

In the spatial-mechanical section, women compared themselves significantly less favorably than men to their male peers: While men estimated that they had correctly answered only 5.8% of the spatial-mechanical items fewer than their male peers; women estimated that they had correctly answered fully 18.8% of the items fewer than their male peers (z = 2.61, p = .009). Although women also compared themselves less favorably than men both to the average undergraduate and to the average female undergraduate, these sex differences were not significant.

In the creativity section, women compared themselves significantly less favorably than men to the average undergraduate. While men estimated that they had creatively answered 6.7% more of the items than the average undergraduate, women estimated that they had creatively answered 4.4% fewer of the items than the average undergraduate (z = 2.69, p = .007). Although women compared themselves less favorably than men both to their male and to their female peers, these sex differences were not significant.

In summary, only in the predicted sections did women express lower self-confidence than men. Women did not compare themselves less favorably than men to any of their peers in either the verbal or the interpersonal perceptiveness sections. However, women did express lower self-confidence than men in the spatial-mechanical section, and they did so particularly when asked to compare themselves to their male peers. It is important to emphasize that this sex difference in self-confidence in the spatial-mechanical section occurred despite the fact that women had actually performed no differently from men. Finally, women also expressed lower self-confidence than men in the creativity section, and they did so particularly when asked to compare themselves to the average undergraduate.

Sex Differences in Other Responses Relevant to Self-Evaluation. The sex differences in self-confidence reported in the preceding section pertain strictly to the manner in which subjects compared themselves to their peers. It will be recalled that subjects actually made three separate responses after each test section and that these responses were also relevant to some aspect of subjects' self-evaluations. Analyses of these separate responses showed no sex differences: (1) estimates of the number of problems which subjects themselves had correctly answered in that section, (2) estimates of the number of problems answered correctly by peers in that section, or (3) ratings of how "good" subjects felt about their performance in that section.

916 Lenney

It will be recalled that the sexes did differ in self-confidence, defined as the difference between subjects' estimates of their own performance and their estimates of their peers' performances. Yet men and women never differed in either of these two components of the self-confidence difference score. These results, which will be discussed later, indicate that when women expressed less self-confidence than men in this study, they did so in a strictly relative sense: They compared their own work less favorably than men to that of their peers. However, women did not estimate that they themselves, in some absolute sense, did worse than men; nor did women estimate that their peers had done better than men.

Sex Differences in Accuracy of Estimated Scores. In order to determine whether either sex was more accurate in estimating their own performance than the other, each subject's actual score in the verbal ability and spatial-mechanical ability subtests 7 was subtracted from their estimate of their own score in that subtest, and the resulting differences were analyzed. The results of these analyses revealed that both men and women overestimated their performances in these two sections, and that they did not differ in the extent to which they did so.

Specifically, in the verbal section, men estimated that they had correctly answered 7.8% of the test more than they actually had, and women estimated that they had correctly answered 8.3% more of the test than they actually had (z = .10, p = .92). Further, in the spatial-mechanical section, men estimated that they had answered 6% more of the test than they actually had, and women estimated that they had answered 9% more of the test than they actually had (z = .76, p = .45).

It must be emphasized that the nature of the task used in this study is such that no broad generalization Can be drawn from the finding that neither men nor women were very accurate in their perception of their own performance. Indeed, pretesting insured that subjects would be uncertain of their own performances and, therefore, could not tell how well they had done. Accordingly, it must be left for future research to employ tasks which permit a meaningful determination of the conditions under which women judge their own work more or less accurately than men.

The results presented thus far clearly support two of the expected patterns discussed earlier. That is, sex differences in self-confidence do appear when individuals evaluate their finished work in the absence of clear feedback, even when (as in the spatial-mechanical section) the sexes do not differ in their actual performance. Furthermore, the nature of such sex differences in postperformance

7The other two sections were not scoreable. In the interpersonal perceptiveness section, there were no correct answers. Creativity problems such as those used in this study are generally scored by subjects' number of responses (see Wallach & Kogan, 1965). How- ever, subjects in this experiment were constrained to give three responses to each creativity question.


self-evaluation is influenced by the specific ability area represented by an achievement task.

It will be recalled that this study was designed to test a second prediction. It was predicted that the particular peer to whom subjects were asked to compare themselves would influence women's self-confidence, but would not influence men's self-confidence. The results relevant to this prediction are presented in the next section.

Tests of Prediction 2: The Impact of the Different Comparison Cues upon Men's and Women's Self-Confidence

Table II displays mean self-confidence difference scores in each section for males and females who compared their own performance to that of each of the three peers. These difference scores within each section are again expressed in terms of the average percentage of problems more or less than the given peer which subjects estimated that they themselves answered correctly. Therefore, if a difference score in Table II is positive, subjects estimated that they had performed better than the particular peer; and if a difference score is negative, subjects estimated that they had performed worse than the particular peer.

In order to test the prediction that women's self-confidence would depend more than men's upon the specific peer to whom subjects were asked to compare themselves, Kruskal-Wallis one-way analyses of variance by ranks were performed separately on self-confidence difference scores for men and for women within each test section. The results of these analyses were as predicted.

As Table II indicates, men's self-confidence was never significantly influenced by the particular peer to whom they were asked to compare themselves. That is, in no subtest did men compare their own work more or less favorably to that of the various peers. Further, neither component of men's self-confidence difference scores ever depended upon the specific peer: That is, in no subtest did men estimate either their own score or the score of a given peer differently, depending upon which of the three specific peers was involved. Thus, men appeared to respond in a manner which was quite independent of the particular individual to whom they compared themselves.

In sharp contrast, women's responses were greatly influenced by the nature of the three social comparison cues. As Table II indicates, in three of the four subtests, women's self-confidence depended upon the particular peer to whom they compared themselves. Only in the verbal subtest did women not differ among themselves in self-confidence.

Specifically, in the interpersonal perceptiveness subtest, women estimated that they had solved the same number of problems as the average undergraduate, more problems than their male peers, but fewer problems than their female

918 Lenney

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peers. In the spatial-mechanical subtest, women estimated that they had solved fewer problems than each of the three peers, but they compared themselves most favorably to their female peers, and least favorably to their male peers. Finally, in the creativity subtest, females estimated that they had given more creative answers than their male peers, but fewer creative answers than either their female peers or than the average undergraduate. There is a striking contrast between this marked dependence of women's self-confidence upon the specific nature of comparison cues, and the remarkable independence from these cues of men's self-confidence.

Did either component of women's self-confidence difference score in any subtest depend upon the specific peer to whom women compared themselves? Women's estimates of their peers' performances never depended upon the specific peer involved. However, in the spatial-mechanical subtest, women's estimates of their own performance did depend upon the particular peer to whom they compared themselves. Specifically, females estimating the score of the average undergraduate estimated that they themselves had correctly answered only 41.7% of the items, and females estimating their male peers' score estimated that they themselves had correctly answered only 43.8% of the items; but females estimating their female peers' score estimated that they themselves had correctly answered fully 56.3% of the items (H = 6.88, p < .05). (There was, however, no difference in the actual performance achieved by these three groups of women, H = 2.81, p < .30.)

Other than this one exception, however, neither women's estimates of their own scores nor their estimates of their peers' scores were influenced by the particular peer involved. These results indicate that the dependence of women's self-confidence upon comparison cues emerged primarily in terms of how favorably they compared themselves to the various peers.

It is worth making a brief digression at this point to examine several factors which may have contributed to the findings that both sex differences and differences among women occurred in terms of subjects' self-evaluation relative to others, and not in terms of subjects' estimates of their own work when these were considered alone. First, the questions asking subjects for their own and their peer estimates appeared immediately adjacent to each other on a page. It is probable that subjects accurately inferred that the variable of interest in these questions was precisely their notion of how they "stacked up" against their peers. If so, subjects may have concentrated on assessing the difference between their own and others' work, with the result that when women's opinion of their own work was fairly low, they slightly (nonsignificantly) decreased their own estimate and slightly (nonsignificantly) raised their peer estimate to produce the pattern of self-confidence findings in this study. Such a train of reasoning might argue that, had peer estimates not been asked, the same pattern of findings would have appeared in subjects' estimates of their own scores. This, of course, is a question which can be resolved only by further research.

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To this author, however, a second explanation seems both more likely and more theoretically interesting: Perhaps it was important that subjects had completed the subtest in question before evaluating their own abilities. It is interesting that the vast majority of studies (referred to in the introduction to this article) which have found women's self-evaluations to be lower than men's have measured subjects' predictions of their own performance on impending achievement tasks. Perhaps women's estimates of their own scores in this study were as high as men's precisely because the subjects had completed their achievement performances.

Evidence cited earlier also suggests the likelihood of such a pattern of sex differences. It will be recalled 'that women state lower self-evaluations than men when performance feedback is minimal or ambiguous. Certainly, less performance information is available when individuals are anticipating a task than when they have completed the task. Therefore, simply completing an achievement task may provide women with enough feedback for a noncomparative assessment of their own abilities (e.g., familiarity with the exact nature of the task, knowledge of the content of one's own responses) to enable them to evaluate their finished work as favorably as men. Again, future research is needed on this question.

In any event, the above discussion should not be allowed to detract from the crucially important point in the present study that women did exhibit lower self-confidence by comparing themselves less favorably to their peers than did men. This indicates that there are important conditions under which women judge their completed level of performance on a task no lower than men's, but may still feel that their work "means" significantly less than men's. Certainly, the belief that one's work does not "stack up well" against that of others is likely to operate as a most effective mechanism of self-discouragement in achievement settings.

It is relevant to reemphasize that the sex differences observed in this study occurred in a situation which has not previously been investigated, that is, under conditions in which individuals were asked to evaluate their finished work in the absence of clear feedback. In this situation, women's self-confidence was lower than men's even on a task (the spatial-mechanical subtest) on which women had actually performed no differently from men. As in this experiment, many naturalistic achievement settings do not provide clear information on the quality of individuals' completed work. Therefore, the sex differences found in this study indicate the need to determine the impact of their low postperformance self-evaluations on women's capacity to achieve.

In summary, the results of this study support the two predictions discussed earlier. First, the specific ability area indeed influenced the nature of sex differences in self-confidence. Women did not compare their own work less favorably than men to that of their peers in either the verbal section, an ability


area in which women typically perform better than men, or in the interpersonal perceptiveness section, an ability area closer to the stereotype of feminine than of masculine skills. Thus, in neither of the more female-oriented sections was there any evidence that women had less self-confidence than men.

However, as predicted, women's self-confidence was indeed lower than men's in both the spatial-mechanical section and the creativity section. These results indicate that while women may express low self-confidence in more ability areas than men, this tendency is actually quite discriminative. In fact, sex differences in self-confidence in this study depended not only upon the specific task but also upon the particular peer to whom subjects compared themselves. That is, women's lower self-confidence in the spatial-mechanical section was expressed primarily with respect to their male peers; but in the creativity section, it was expressed primarily with respect to a peer whose sex was not specified. Clearly, women's low self-confidence, far from appearing across all situations, closely reflected varying combinations of task and social factors.

Also as predicted, women's self-confidence was indeed more dependent than men's upon the specific peer to whom they compared themselves. In sharp contrast to men's independence from these social comparison cues, women's evaluations of the relative quality of their own work depended greatly upon the specific individual to whom they compared themselves. Although several ex- planations are possible for these differences among women in response to the three comparison cues, it seems most likely that women's self-confidence was affected by their assumptions or sex-role stereotypes about the differing com- petencies of the various peers. For example, women may have compared their work least favorably to that of their male peers in the spatial-mechanical section because they believed that men generally have high abilities on such tasks. And perhaps women compared their work least favorably to that of their female peers in the interpersonal perceptiveness section because they believed that women generally have good interpersonal skills. 8

In any event, the finding in this experiment that women's self-confidence is significantly responsive to comparison cues indicates an important way in which they may be more adversely affected than men by social factors in performance settings. Of course, there are extreme situations in which self-confidence probably should be affected by social cues: Any reasonable person, for example, should feel that he or she probably did worse than a genius, but better

8That the competence of others in their social environment is relevant to the nature of sex differences in self-confidence has been shown in a recent study by Lenney & Browning- Crinion (Note 3). These investigators found that when subjects anticipated future face-to- face evaluation by a highly competent peer (but not when they expected evaluation by less competent others), women's self-confidence was lower than men's.

922 Lenney

than a retardate on an intelligence measure. However, in most achievement situations, there is either no clear indication of others' competence or the indications that exist should not objectively result in marked self-denigration or self-inflation. In such cases, it is probably most conducive to effective achievement efforts to judge the quality of one's work independently from the specific characteristics of any other individuals to whom one might be compared. That women significantly altered their self-evaluations in response to comparison cues, then, may be evidence that their primary "problerd" with self-confidence is that it is insufficiently "anchored" and is, therefore, excessively vulnerable to logically extraneous social factors. Clearly, this possibility merits much further study.

In conclusion, at least two "meta-issues" are raised by this study's findings. First, it is important to emphasize that the sex differences in self-confidence found in this study occurred specifically in terms of how favorably subjects compared their own work to that of their peers. Men and women did not differ in this experiment on their simple estimates of their own performances. This pattern of results suggests that (at least for postperformance self-evaluations, if not for performance expectancies), there may be two distinct aspects of self-evaluation, each of which merits independent study in future research: "absolute self-evaluation," or the assessment of one's own performance in non- relational terms, and "relative self-evaluation," or the assessment of one's performance in the strictly comparative sense in which sex differences in self-confidence appeared in this study. In the vast majority of naturalistic achievement settings, individuals cannot evaluate themselves by absolute measures of adequacy; they must, therefore, judge their own work in precisely the relative sense explored in this study. That the sexes differed in judgments of the relative quality of their work indicates the need for future research on this kind of "relative self-evaluation."

Second, the most important thread running through the results of this study is a simple but crucial one: This research directly challenges previous re- viewers' conclusions that women are lower in self-confidence than men across almost all achievement settings (e.g., Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974; Frieze et al., 1978). Instead, self-confidence appears to be complexly determined, and situation variables significantly moderate sex differences in self-evaluation. It will be important for future research to refine and extend the implications of this project by determining more precisely the conditions which increase and decrease women's self-confidence relative to men's. If the thrust of this experiment is borne out in future research, the focus on women's problems in self-confidence will shift from an emphasis on what is "wrong" with the individual woman to what is "wrong" with how women often respond to clearly defined situation- specific stimuli.


REFERENCE NOTES

1. Lenney, E. Low self-confidence among women: The influences o f ability area and of social comparison cues upon women's self.evaluations. Paper presented at the Western Psychological Association Convention, Los Angeles, 1976.

2. Deaux, K., & Farris, E. Attributing causes for one's performance: The'effects o f sex, norms, and outcome. Unpublished manuscript, Purdue University, 1974.

3. Lenney, E., & Browning-Crinion, C. Low self-confidence among women: The influence o f anticipated cooperation with a partner o f high, average, or low ability. Paper presented at the Eastern Psychological Association Convention, Washington, D.C., 1978.

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