The Frequency of “Brilliant” and “Genius” in Teaching Evaluations Predicts the Representation of Women and African Americans across Fields

Abstract

Women and African Americans—groups targeted by negative stereotypes about their intellectual abilities—may be underrepresented in careers that prize brilliance and genius. A recent nationwide survey of academics provided initial support for this possibility. Fields whose practitioners believed that natural talent is crucial for success had fewer female and African American PhDs. The present study seeks to replicate this initial finding with a different, and arguably more naturalistic, measure of the extent to which brilliance and genius are prized within a field. Specifically, we measured field-by-field variability in the emphasis on these intellectual qualities by tallying—with the use of a recently released online tool—the frequency of the words “brilliant” and “genius” in over 14 million reviews on RateMyProfessors.com, a popular website where students can write anonymous evaluations of their instructors. This simple word count predicted both women’s and African Americans’ representation across the academic spectrum. That is, we found that fields in which the words “brilliant” and “genius” were used more frequently on RateMyProfessors.com also had fewer female and African American PhDs. Looking at an earlier stage in students’ educational careers, we found that brilliance-focused fields also had fewer women and African Americans obtaining bachelor’s degrees. These relationships held even when accounting for field-specific averages on standardized mathematics assessments, as well as several competing hypotheses concerning group differences in representation. The fact that this naturalistic measure of a field’s focus on brilliance predicted the magnitude of its gender and race gaps speaks to the tight link between ability beliefs and diversity.

Framing Engineering: The Role of College Website Descriptions

“…Analyzing Ph.D. students, they found that when a field places a higher emphasis on "brilliance," the ratio of women to men in that field tends to be lower. These results were also supported at the undergraduate level in a follow-up study (Storage et al 2016). Storage et al (2016) set out to analyze whether the frequency of the words "brilliant" and "genius" in student teaching evaluations within STEM disciplines would be related to the number of female Ph.Ds.…”

“…These results were also supported at the undergraduate level in a follow-up study (Storage et al 2016). Storage et al (2016) set out to analyze whether the frequency of the words "brilliant" and "genius" in student teaching evaluations within STEM disciplines would be related to the number of female Ph.Ds. and undergraduate students within a given STEM discipline.…”

“…Similarly, although not statistically significant, the number of female undergraduate students also trended downwards as comments about "brilliant" and "genius" professors increased. Although this proxy data was not statistically significant at the undergraduate level, the researchers also assessed survey data and found that when fields place a higher value on raw talent, women's undergraduate representation within the field tends to be lower (Storage et al 2016). …”

Transforming mentorship in STEM by training scientists to be better leaders

“…Effective mentoring can be difficult to measure as it involves both metrics of graduate student success (e.g., publishing papers, progress toward graduation), and less tangible metrics such as student mental health, support, and satisfaction. Additionally, evidence from research on teaching evaluations suggests that students can be biased when evaluating certain groups, such as women, and thus evaluations based on student opinion alone must be used with caution (Boring, ; Mengel, Zölitz, & Mengel, ; Miles & House, ; Stark & Freishtat, ; Storage, Horne, Cimpian, & Leslie, ). Finally, finding mechanisms that allow for honest feedback in academia is challenging, as graduate students and postdocs must be protected from retribution in cases of a negative review.…”

Children lose confidence in their potential to “be scientists,” but not in their capacity to “do science”

“…Some of these stereotypes entail particular social identities-for example, that scientists are male, White, and of relatively high socioeconomic status (Archer et al, 2012(Archer et al, , 2013Barman, 1999;Buldu, 2006;Chambers, 1983;Finson, 2002;Fort & Varney, 1989;Wong, 2015). These various stereotypes also interact with one another-as when children (Bian, Leslie, & Cimpian, 2017) and adults Storage, Horne, Cimpian, & Leslie, 2016) expect those who are brilliant to also be White and male. These various stereotypes also interact with one another-as when children (Bian, Leslie, & Cimpian, 2017) and adults Storage, Horne, Cimpian, & Leslie, 2016) expect those who are brilliant to also be White and male.…”