The academic success of boys and girls as an identity issue in gender relations: when the most threatened is not the one expected

Abstract

The present research aims to determine whether girls' higher academic achievement, which should grant them a higher academic status than boys, could prevent them from experiencing social-identity threat on this dimension. Because they fear situations questioning their superiority, we argue that an unfavourable intergroup comparison would be more threatening for the high-status, rather than low-status, group on the dimension of academic achievement. Two studies were conducted respectively in high school, where girls should represent the high-status group (Study 1), and middle school, where students might perceive their own group as the high-status group (Study 2).Although both middle-school and high-school students perceived girls as the high-status group, they appraised the outgroup superiority differently. Indeed, it had more impact on girls' perceived threat and boys' perceived challenge in high school (Study 1), but not in middle school (Study 2). The results, however, did not show significant impact of context on performance.