Ladies, men aren’t happy when you succeed — but they won’t admit it, according to a new study.
Research shows straight men’s self-esteem drops following a romantic
partner’s success, while women’s self-esteem remains unchanged after
hearing similar news.
Study author Kate Ratliff of the University of Florida explained “there
is some evidence that men automatically interpret a partner’s success
as their own failure,” in a report published in the
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
In one experiment, college students were told their partners scored in
either the top 12% or bottom 12% in a “test of problem solving and
social intelligence.”
How their girlfriends performed didn’t affect men’s reported
self-esteem — what they told researchers — but when given a test to
determine how they felt subconsciously, it was clear men whose partners
performed well experienced a drop in self-worth.
The subconscious
testing involved quizzing participants on what adjectives they use to
describe themselves.
But the same didn’t hold true for women, whose self-esteem wasn’t
affected by their partners’ success. In fact, women reported feeling
happier about the relationship when men succeeded.
This could be because “men tend to be more competitive than women,” Ratliff suggested.
“A similar argument is that self-esteem might be impacted when one
fails to fulfill the roles ascribed to one’s gender,” she wrote in the
report.
Additional experiments took place in the Netherlands and in online
surveys of more than 600 people. In all cases, the findings were
similar.
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