Praise Without a Raise

Pennsylvania State University psychologist Theresa Vescio posed an intellectual challenge to a team of men and women working for a male boss. When researchers described the team's task in stereotypically male terms -- using football metaphors and emphasizing competition -- male supervisors with sexist tendencies lavished praise on their female staff (telling them, for example, that their answers were "extremely informative"). But the bosses didn't give the women the higher-paying, important positions.

Praise without a raise is patronizing. Vescio found empty praise affected male and female subordinates differently. While both sexes became angry, men performed better than women on subsequent tasks.

"For men the patronizing experience is rather atypical," Vescio explains, "so they step up effort and try to change." But for women, condescension falls into an all-too-familiar and seemingly inescapable pattern. "It undermines women's efforts because it's harder to see how anything you do can overcome other people's stereotyping."

Rooting out the sexist mind-set solves the problem. When the researchers did not describe the team's task in macho terms, male supervisors treated women as equals -- and the women performed better.

The study appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.