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| Images of high achievers made participants feel inferior |
Recent research into role models says we may be choosing the wrong
people to emulate, and that could be hurting us professionally.
“The more exceptional performers are, the less we may learn from them,”
said Chengwei Liu, an assistant professor of strategy and behavioral
science at the University of Warwick in Britain.
In fact, he said, we may do better to look to solid workers who aren’t
as flashy as those at the top, but consistently perform well. ...
The women [in the experiment] who were shown the superstar women alone or the combination of
men and women reported greater feelings of inferiority and a harder
time doing their task than those who had been exposed to only male
leaders or to the unrelated pictures.
The authors of the study called it a self-deflating effect. “It is safe
to say that exposure to these leaders did more harm than good to women’s
self-perception,” the study stated.
There is an interesting twist: in another experiment, some participants
were shown women who were somewhat, but not highly, successful, like a
local news reporter. These women leaders elicited more positive
responses, the paper stated, because they were not seen as exceptions.
