Thrilled to share that my first ever solo-authored research paper is out in JPSP! I find that men perceive more ingroup harm from women’s gains in power (i.e. control over valuable resources) than from women’s gains in status (i.e. respect from others). 🧵

RT @matt_southward_: .@sonya_mishra: when women’s gains are framed as ⬆️ their power (control of resources), men are ⬇️ likely to support t….

For anyone who is at #APS25DC and feels like spending their Sunday morning learning about how men are threatened by women gaining power, come see me present at 9:45am tomorrow in the Kalorama room. And yes—.somehow I’ve landed yet another early morning conference slot 🙃.

I’ll be presenting this work at APS in Washington DC next month, IACM in Burlington in July, and AOM in Copenhagen this August! Check out the open access paper here:

Finally, this finding has implications for men’s behavior. Study 5 found that men donated 10% less money to a nonprofit framed as increasing women’s power (versus status). Collectively, these findings advance our theoretical understanding of why men resist women’s advancement.

When the perceived zero-sumness of the diversity initiative was reduced, the difference in men’s felt ingroup harm from women’s power (versus status) gains disappeared, suggesting that zero sum perceptions of the *domain* women are advancing in is a *precursor* to ingroup harm.

This finding also has organizational implications. In Study 4, men perceived more ingroup harm from a diversity initiative framed as increasing women’s power (versus status), and were less supportive of the initiative as a result.

This finding has political implications. In Study 3, when men learned of women’s power gains (versus status gains), they perceived more ingroup harm, which mediated their heightened political conservatism.

This is driven by the perception that power is more zero-sum than status. When women gain power, men feel like something is being taken away from them. Since status is perceived as less finite, when women gain status, it leaves men’s position relatively intact.

For anyone interested in gender & hierarchy that is ALSO a morning person, come check out my presentation at #spsp2025 this Saturday at 8am ☠️ (Ballroom 1)! This my *first* time presenting my *first* solo-author paper and examines men’s perceptions of women’s power/status gains!.

Check out our full paper here! .

The takeaway? When teams are both hierarchical and diverse, having hierarchical representation becomes necessary in order to maintain positive perceptions obtained from having higher numerical diversity. Who has power matters just as much as who is represented.

When we manipulated the hierarchical structure of a team by organizing headshots in a circle instead of a pyramid, teams arranged in a circle were perceived similarly to hierarchical teams that had HierRep (Study 4).

Holding numerical diversity constant, perceivers significantly *underestimated* the percentage of Black employees for teams that lacked HierRep (p< .001), but not for teams that had HierRep (p= .482; Study 3). We call this the *Diversity Deflation* effect.

In fact, teams that *lack* HierRep are perceived no differently on attractiveness (e.g., the extent to which participants want to join a team) compared to teams that have lower numerical diversity altogether (Study 2)

Teams that *lack* hierarchical representation (HierRep) are perceived as less diverse, more conflict-laden, and as less attractive employers relative to teams with high HierRep. The effect of HierRep on perceived attractiveness is larger for Black (vs. White) perceivers (Study 1)

Our paper is out! 🙌🏽 In our latest research, we examine how hierarchical representation— or the extent to which women and racial minorities are represented in positions of power—shapes perceptions of teams 🧵@NDerek_brown @Shoshana_Jarvis & Cameron Anderson

Excited to share that I’ll be presenting my first solo-authored project at #SPSP2025 in a single paper symposium! In this project, I investigate how zero-sum perceptions of hierarchy shape men’s reactions to women’s hierarchical advancement. Can’t wait to share the findings!.

For those interested in learning more, check out my talk at #AOM2024 this Sunday (Aug 11) at 1:15pm at the Hyatt Field!.

By conflating power and status, we might be lulled into believing that our society is making progress on the gender equality front, when we’re actually entrenching inequality by pretending that Beyonce and Reese Witherspoon wield the same type of power as Jeff Bezos and Putin.