Male hubris and female humility: disrupting the female humility that leads girls to underrate themselves

Issue 4/2022: March 30, 2022
A “curious phenomenon”, of males overestimating their IQ while women underestimate theirs, has been “frequently observed in psychological studies over the last few decades”. According to Griffith University’s David Reilly, the trend has been evidenced so “universally” across samples and cultures that it resulted in Furnham et al. (2001) coining the term ‘male hubris, female humility’ to describe the effect (Reilly et al., 2022, p.2).

In an article for The Conversation, Reilly (2022) writes that his recent research has once more reinforced the ‘male hubris, female humility’ effect — while also investigating whether it is only biological sex or also “sex-role identification” (for example how much one associates with “masculine” personality traits) that leads to people overestimating their own IQ (p. 13).

Another seemingly contradictory, but perhaps less ‘curious’ phenomenon, is that people generally overestimate their own “socially desirable traits”. Reilly (2022) says this phenomenon is called “the above-average effect”. So, if most people overestimate their positive traits, then why would women consistently underrate their intelligence?Reilly blames historical “implicit beliefs about gender and intellect”, such as the long-debunked belief that women’s “slightly smaller skulls” indicated lower intelligence. While this debunking corrected people’s explicit beliefs, he warns that people still unconsciously reinforce these beliefs because of unresolved (implicit) bias. Considering cognitive psychology proved long ago that “women and men are equal in measured IQ”, Reilly et al. (2022) wondered if lingering bias was affecting society’s perception of what it means to be ‘female’ — and if this was contributing to women’s tendency underrate their own intelligence.“Educational psychologists,” Reilly (2022) explains, are acutely aware of the dangers of damaging the “intellectual self-image” of young people in this manner, “because it’s often a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you think you can’t, you won’t”.

This danger makes all the more significant the fact that girls and women generally rate their self-esteem significantly lower than boys and men — a difference that “emerges early in adolescence” — presumably when they become increasingly aware of the expectations placed on them by a society still clinging to gendered roles. “On this basis”, the researchers reasoned that self-esteem could explain why women underestimate their intelligence.Reilly et al.’s (2022) research results were as expected; people rated their own IQs as “slightly above average” across the board — and this was despite the fact that participants were warned their self-assessments would be compared with real IQ test results (to keep them honest, in light of the ‘above-average effect’).

In order to understand how sex/gender, confidence and sex-role identification interacted, participants were asked to estimate not only their IQ but also their confidence/self-esteem. They also completed a “Bem Sex Role Inventory’ to measure “sex-role identification”. This test told researchers how closely they associated with “stereotypically feminine and masculine behaviours”(Reilly et al., 2022, p. 1).

When the results were analysed more closely however, they revealed that — while both women and men had been “fairly consistent in their accuracy” — “male scores were more often overestimates”, while “females scores were more often underestimates” (Reilly et al., 2022). This aligned with the ‘male hubris, female humility’ effect, but not the ‘above-average’ effect. So, which one was true, they may well have puzzled?

Interestingly, while male biological sex was still the strongest predictor for people overrating their own IQ, ‘psychological masculinity’ was also associated with IQ overestimation. Essentially, the findings suggested that self-associating with ‘typical male’ characteristics correlates with an overinflated assessment of your own IQ; conversely, associating with society’s perception of ‘femaleness’ seemed to have the opposite effect (Reilly et al., 2022). As all-girls school community members, readers will likely be unsurprised at the conclusion that society’s perception of gender affects how women feel about themselves. Most readers are living it, and, if not, they are educating and supporting individuals who are. When reductive societal attitudes continue to underestimate all women in a girl’s life-extending past her mother, sisters, and friends to highly competent female professionals and politicians — is it any wonder then that the doubt creeps in?

Conversely, boys are imbued with a sense of confidence, safe in the repeated experience that a mediocre performance will still guarantee success — as exemplified by male leaders whose failings are repeatedly overlooked, while women must double down to achieve the same results.

“Wouldn’t it be nice,” Reilly (2022) asks, “if, as parents, educators, and a society, we could build the confidence of girls and young women to a level where they believe in themselves and are free of those doubts?”. Yes, it is ‘nice’ and, in fact, already a reality in all-girls schools across the world, where — like Reilly — leaders and educators are acutely aware of the dangers of a “self-fulfilling prophecy”.

They also know that the self-fulfilling prophecy works in the reverse, and a prophecy that envisions future success, empowerment, and resilience that cuts through the glass ceiling — in addition to current wellbeing and achievement — is more than possible. That’s how all-girls schools manage to ‘build the confidence of girls’ in our gender-biased world; they purposefully create an environment where students grow strong, confident, and ready to insist on the lives they deserve.

ReferencesReilly D. (2022, March 15). Men think they’re brighter than they are and women underestimate their IQ. Why? The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/men-think-theyre-brighter-than-they-areand-women-underestimate-their-iq-why-178645Reilly, D. Neumann, D.L. & Andrews, G. (2022). Gender differences in self-estimated intelligence: Exploring the male hubris, female humility problem. Frontiers in psychology, 13(812483) https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.812483