High cognitive ability in women may come with a hidden social penalty in everyday workplace life, according to a multistudy investigation led by Nitya Chawla of the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. In two separate settings, highly capable women were seen as more hostile by colleagues and reported receiving less assistance and more victimisation, while men with similar scores did not show the same pattern.
Researchers note that cognitive ability encompasses the capacity to learn, reason, solve problems and grasp complex ideas, and that gender stereotypes continue to shape how peers evaluate and treat one another at work.
Social role theory suggests unwritten rules about how men and women should behave; communal traits are traditionally expected of women, while agentic traits are traditionally associated with men.
On top of that, a phenomenon called the implied communality deficit describes how highly competent women may be assumed to lack warmth, leading to perceptions of hostility and reduced support.
Study one involved 432 undergraduate business students in the United States assigned to semester-long consulting teams; around four weeks in, participants took the Wonderlic test; seven weeks later they rated teammates for hostility; a few weeks after that they reported how often they received task or emotional help and whether they experienced subtle victimisation.
Results showed that for women, higher cognitive ability correlated with higher hostility ratings by teammates, which in turn linked to more victimisation and less help. For men, the pattern did not emerge.
Some results were sensitive to data handling: when two students with extremely low scores were included, the gender difference ceased to be statistically significant, though women with higher scores were still rated as more hostile.
Study two moved to a corporate setting in China, with 394 full-time employees in a financial firm that requires cognitive ability testing during recruitment.
Participants completed an initial survey rating each team member on hostility and communality, then about three weeks later reported victimisation and help frequency.
Again, women with higher cognitive ability were perceived as more hostile and as less communal. These perceptions were tied to worse treatment: more victimisation and less task- and personal-related help.
Among the male participants, higher ability was linked to lower hostility ratings, which in turn correlated with less victimisation and more help, a contrast to the student sample where patterns differed.
The authors suggest cultural norms may explain the divergence, noting that in societies with traditional gender norms, men with lower ability may be seen as falling short of masculine expectations.
Across both studies, researchers controlled for individual traits such as emotional tendencies and paranoia (or anger) and tested whether domineering behaviour explained the results; in the corporate sample, higher-scoring women were rated as more domineering, but this did not account for mistreatment.
Chawla summarised the central takeaway: “One of the central takeaways is that being perceived as intelligent doesn’t necessarily translate into being treated well at work, particularly for women.” “These differences emerge in seemingly ordinary workplace interactions, such as whether colleagues offer task- or emotional-related help, treat them with respect, or instead choose to victimise them.”
“I think the broader takeaway is that recognizing someone’s intelligence is not the same as treating them equitably,” she added. “Organizations need to pay attention not only to how employees are evaluated, but also to how those evaluations shape their everyday interactions with colleagues.”
“One important clarification is that our findings should not be interpreted as suggesting that highly intelligent women are inherently less warm, supportive, or collaborative—or that they act in ways that somehow justify the perceptions and treatment of them,” she noted. “In our research, we controlled for this possibility directly and our results hold regardless of these potential perceptions. Rather, our research highlights how gender stereotypes can shape the assumptions colleagues make about women who are perceived as highly intelligent.”
“I think it’s important to recognise that the practical significance of these findings extends beyond any single interaction,” she said. “Being excluded from a conversation or not receiving help from a colleague might seem relatively inconsequential in isolation. But when these experiences occur repeatedly, they can shape someone’s sense of belonging, access to resources, and ability to thrive at work.”
“Who receives help? Who is included? Who is treated as a valued colleague? These experiences may seem less consequential than formal organisational decisions, but they can meaningfully shape people’s opportunities and experiences at work.”
“One direction that I think is particularly important is bringing intersectionality to the forefront of this conversation,” Chawla explained. “Although our research examined how the interpersonal consequences of intelligence differ between women and men, we were not able to investigate how these patterns might vary across racial and ethnic groups. This is an important limitation, particularly given existing research suggesting that stereotypes surrounding intelligence, competence, and capability are themselves racialised.”
“Women are not a monolithic group, and the stereotypes that shape how an intelligent woman is perceived may differ substantially depending on her racial or ethnic identity,” she added. “For example, the expectations and assumptions directed toward a highly intelligent Black woman differ from those directed toward a highly intelligent White or Asian woman. I think understanding how gender intersects with race, ethnicity, and other social identities is essential to developing a more complete picture of the observed dynamics.”
“More broadly, I’d love to see research aimed at understanding how organisations and/or supervisors can disrupt these patterns, particularly by examining the conditions under which intelligence is recognised and valued without producing unintended interpersonal penalties,” Chawla said.
“Ultimately, I hope this research encourages organisations to think more critically about the assumptions employees make about one another, and how even seemingly positive attributes like intelligence can become a source of inequality when viewed through the lens of gender stereotypes,” she added.
The study, “Understanding the Intersection of Gender and Cognitive Ability on Interpersonal Outcomes: A Multistudy Investigation,” was authored by Nitya Chawla, Trevor M. Spoelma, Seo-Hyun Kwon, Allison S. Gabriel, Aleksander P. J. Ellis, and Wen Wu.
