Sarah-Jane Leslie

Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines

Womens participation and attitudes to talent Some scientific disciplines have lower percentages of women in academia than others. Leslie et al. hypothesized that general attitudes about the discipline would reflect the representation of women in those fields (see the Perspective by Penner). Surveys revealed that some fields are believed to require attributes such as brilliance and genius, whereas other fields are believed to require more empathy or hard work. In fields where people thought that raw talent was required, academic departments had lower percentages of women. Science, this issue p. 262; see also p. 234 General opinions about talent versus effort hold sway over representation of women in academic departments. [Also see Perspective by Penner] The gender imbalance in STEM subjects dominates current debates about women’s underrepresentation in academia. However, women are well represented at the Ph.D. level in some sciences and poorly represented in some humanities (e.g., in 2011, 54% of U.S. Ph.D.’s in molecular biology were women versus only 31% in philosophy). We hypothesize that, across the academic spectrum, women are underrepresented in fields whose practitioners believe that raw, innate talent is the main requirement for success, because women are stereotyped as not possessing such talent. This hypothesis extends to African Americans’ underrepresentation as well, as this group is subject to similar stereotypes. Results from a nationwide survey of academics support our hypothesis (termed the field-specific ability beliefs hypothesis) over three competing hypotheses.

Generics: Cognition and Acquisition

Philosophers of language sometimes theorize about obscure sentences, rarely found in everyday discourse, or about the applicability of sentences to strange, unrealized possible circumstances. Ordinary speakers of English often lack clear intuitions about the truth or falsity of these sentences, and so the theorizing is based on the judgments of the select few whose intuitions are sufficiently honed. Other times, however, one need not venture into obscurity to find a phenomenon worthy of attention. If one so chooses, one may ask any English speaker whatsoever whether sentences such as ‘tigers have stripes’, ‘birds lay eggs’, or ‘mosquitoes carry the West Nile virus’ are true, or whether ‘mosquitoes don’t carry the West Nile virus’ and ‘birds are female’ are false. The response is invariably confident and immediate. These simple examples present a puzzle with no simple solution. That ‘tigers have stripes’ is true might not seem particularly troubling; even if some tigers lack stripes, most tigers sport them. Examples such as ‘birds lay eggs’, though, indicate that it is not necessary for the truth of these sentences that the majority of the kind in question satisfy the predicate; most birds do not lay eggs, yet ‘birds lay eggs’ is true. Closer

Cultural transmission of social essentialism

Social essentialism entails the belief that certain social categories (e.g., gender, race) mark fundamentally distinct kinds of people. Essentialist beliefs have pernicious consequences, supporting social stereotyping and contributing to prejudice. How does social essentialism develop? In the studies reported here, we tested the hypothesis that generic language facilitates the cultural transmission of social essentialism. Two studies found that hearing generic language about a novel social category diverse for race, ethnicity, age, and sex led 4-y-olds and adults to develop essentialist beliefs about that social category. A third study documented that experimentally inducing parents to hold essentialist beliefs about a novel social category led them to produce more generic language when discussing the category with their children. Thus, generic language facilitates the transmission of essentialist beliefs about social categories from parents to children.

Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence children’s interests

Emergent attitudes toward brilliance The distribution of women and men across academic disciplines seems to be affected by perceptions of intellectual brilliance. Bian et al. studied young children to assess when those differential perceptions emerge. At age 5, children seemed not to differentiate between boys and girls in expectations of “really, really smart”—childhoods version of adult brilliance. But by age 6, girls were prepared to lump more boys into the “really, really smart” category and to steer themselves away from games intended for the “really, really smart.” Science, this issue p. 389 By age 6, girls become less likely to associate brilliance with their own gender and tend to avoid intellectually challenging activities. Common stereotypes associate high-level intellectual ability (brilliance, genius, etc.) with men more than women. These stereotypes discourage women’s pursuit of many prestigious careers; that is, women are underrepresented in fields whose members cherish brilliance (such as physics and philosophy). Here we show that these stereotypes are endorsed by, and influence the interests of, children as young as 6. Specifically, 6-year-old girls are less likely than boys to believe that members of their gender are “really, really smart.” Also at age 6, girls begin to avoid activities said to be for children who are “really, really smart.” These findings suggest that gendered notions of brilliance are acquired early and have an immediate effect on children’s interests.

Women are underrepresented in fields where success is believed to require brilliance

Women’s underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is a prominent concern in our society and many others. Closer inspection of this phenomenon reveals a more nuanced picture, however, with women achieving parity with men at the Ph.D. level in certain STEM fields, while also being underrepresented in some non-STEM fields. It is important to consider and provide an account of this field-by-field variability. The field-specific ability beliefs (FAB) hypothesis aims to provide such an account, proposing that women are likely to be underrepresented in fields thought to require raw intellectual talent—a sort of talent that women are stereotyped to possess less of than men. In two studies, we provide evidence for the FAB hypothesis, demonstrating that the academic fields believed by laypeople to require brilliance are also the fields with lower female representation. We also found that the FABs of participants with college-level exposure to a field were more predictive of its female representation than those of participants without college exposure, presumably because the former beliefs mirror more closely those of the field’s practitioners (the direct “gatekeepers”). Moreover, the FABs of participants with college exposure to a field predicted the magnitude of the field’s gender gap above and beyond their beliefs about the level of mathematical and verbal skills required. Finally, we found that beliefs about the importance of brilliance to success in a field may predict its female representation in part by fostering the impression that the field demands solitary work and competition with others. These results suggest new solutions for enhancing diversity within STEM and across the academic spectrum.

The Frequency of “Brilliant” and “Genius” in Teaching Evaluations Predicts the Representation of Women and African Americans across Fields

Women and African Americans—groups targeted by negative stereotypes about their intellectual abilities—may be underrepresented in careers that prize brilliance and genius. A recent nationwide survey of academics provided initial support for this possibility. Fields whose practitioners believed that natural talent is crucial for success had fewer female and African American PhDs. The present study seeks to replicate this initial finding with a different, and arguably more naturalistic, measure of the extent to which brilliance and genius are prized within a field. Specifically, we measured field-by-field variability in the emphasis on these intellectual qualities by tallying—with the use of a recently released online tool—the frequency of the words “brilliant” and “genius” in over 14 million reviews on RateMyProfessors.com, a popular website where students can write anonymous evaluations of their instructors. This simple word count predicted both women’s and African Americans’ representation across the academic spectrum. That is, we found that fields in which the words “brilliant” and “genius” were used more frequently on RateMyProfessors.com also had fewer female and African American PhDs. Looking at an earlier stage in students’ educational careers, we found that brilliance-focused fields also had fewer women and African Americans obtaining bachelor’s degrees. These relationships held even when accounting for field-specific averages on standardized mathematics assessments, as well as several competing hypotheses concerning group differences in representation. The fact that this naturalistic measure of a field’s focus on brilliance predicted the magnitude of its gender and race gaps speaks to the tight link between ability beliefs and diversity.

Inferences about Members of Kinds: The Generics Hypothesis

People routinely make inferences based on kind membership. For example, if you were told that a particular kind of animal is a tiger, then you would likely infer that it has stripes. Under what conditions are people willing to infer that a member of a given kind has a property? Two hypotheses were examined. The base rate or prevalence hypothesis holds that people rely only on their knowledge of the statistical frequency of a property among its kind to infer whether a member has that property. An alternative is the generics hypothesis, which states that people are influenced by their belief that the relevant generic generalization is true. In other words, if people agree to the generalization, “ducks lay eggs”, then they should be willing to make the inference that an arbitrary individual duck lays eggs, despite their knowledge that the majority of ducks do not lay eggs (i.e., juveniles, males, and infertile females). We present data that support the second hypothesis. Rather than being driven solely by beliefs about prevalence, agreement to the relevant generic predicted performance on an inference task beyond estimated prevalence or cue validity. These findings suggest that models of categorization that are based solely on statistical or simple probabilistic principles are incomplete. They also provide support for the idea that generics articulate core conceptual beliefs that guide our interactions with the world.

Children's interpretations of general quantifiers, specific quantifiers and generics

Recently, several scholars have hypothesised that generics are a default mode of generalisation, and thus that young children may at first treat quantifiers as if they were generic in meaning. To address this issue, the present experiment provides the first in-depth, controlled examination of the interpretation of generics compared to both general quantifiers (‘all Xs’, ‘some Xs’) and specific quantifiers (‘all of these Xs’, ‘some of these Xs’). We provided children (3 and 5 years) and adults with explicit frequency information regarding properties of novel categories, to chart when ‘some’, ‘all’ and generics are deemed appropriate. The data reveal three main findings. First, even 3-year-olds distinguish generics from quantifiers. Second, when children make errors, they tend to be in the direction of treating quantifiers like generics. Third, children were more accurate when interpreting specific versus general quantifiers. We interpret these data as providing evidence for the position that generics are a default mode of generalisation, especially when reasoning about kinds.

The Brilliance Trap

The article discusses the academic emphasis of intellectual brilliance that discourages women and African Americans from certain academic domains. It views individuals that lack intelligence were condemned to trail behind their more brilliant peers in their chosen fields. It presents a survey that shows the trait of brilliance and field-specific ability of professionals in different academic fields.

Cultural context shapes essentialist beliefs about religion.

The present study investigates the processes by which essentialist beliefs about religious categories develop. Children (ages 5 and 10) and adults (n = 350) from 2 religious groups (Jewish and Christian), with a range of levels of religiosity, completed switched-at-birth tasks in which they were told that a baby had been born to parents of 1 religion but raised by parents of another religion. Results indicated that younger children saw religion-based categories as possible essential kinds, regardless of the child’s own religious background, but that culture-specific patterns emerged across development. This work shows that cultural context plays a powerful role in guiding the development of essentialist beliefs about religious categories.