Gender, performance level, and competence standards in task groups

Male and female undergraduates (N = 240) participated in opposite-sex dyads and worked on a computerized visual task presented as “masculine.” Participants in the eight experimental conditions received either higher or lower scores than their partner; this phase was omitted in the two control conditions. In turn, half of the experimental groups received universal competence-standards from the experimenter, while the other half set standards by themselves. In the second phase, the two persons worked on the task as a team. The central hypothesis is that subject-generated standards will favor the men, and that this will result in the women being perceived as having less competence even if achieving the same performance-level as men; this inequality is predicted to no longer be maintained in the groups with experimenter-set standards. Measures include rejection of influence, perceived ability in self and partner, and level of acceptance of both the stated sex-linkage of the task and the experimenter-set standard. Results and their interpretation are presented and discussed in detail.