Browsing by Author "Huntoon, Meghan"

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I'm Incredible!: Consequences of Violating the Modesty Norm
(2013-03) Huntoon, Meghan; Smith, Jessi l.
Past research examined whether women’s tendency to feel uncomfortable with self-promotion (which violates modesty norms) can be offset via misattribution. Results showed when provided with an external source for discomfort, the quality and quantity of promotion increased as did women’s subjective experience. The current project examines whether women suffer consequences when self-promoting compared to men. Results showed that when essay quality is ambiguous judges rate the same essay detailing personal accomplishments more positively when it is thought to be authored by a man compared to when it is thought to be authored by a woman. The findings suggest that women suffer consequences for violating modesty norms. Career implications associated with women’s self-promotion are discussed.
Understanding how chemistry helps can help : an experimental investigation of increasing women's motivation to pursue chemistry research
(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2013) Huntoon, Meghan; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Jessi L. Smith
What social factors play a role in women's interest in pursuing a scientific research career? Goal congruity theory posits that people pursue careers that fulfill important goals and values. Women may avoid pursuing chemistry, for example, because women tend to highly endorse communal goals (working with and helping others) and chemistry is viewed as unlikely to afford communal goals. Experiment 1 tested whether chemistry research is stereotyped as non-communal in nature. People rated an identical research task framed as either a "psychology" or "chemistry" task or no information was given. Unfortunately, the subtle manipulation of task frame failed to influence participants' ratings of communal and agentic affordances of the task. Nevertheless, exploratory analyses of data that did not rely on the manipulation found that people who personally endorsed agentic goals reported more belongingness in science, and women who personally endorsed agentic goals reported more interest in scientific research. This project also tested if self-generating the communal and agentic applications of a science task increases motivation to pursue chemistry research, and if such connections are especially successful in eliciting research motivation among women (Experiment 2). The hypotheses were not testable because analysis of the manipulation check revealed that fewer than 51% of participants successfully self-generated condition appropriate items. Discussion centers on exploratory results and future directions.
Women’s Bragging Rights: Overcoming Modesty Norms to Facilitate Women’s Self-Promotion
(2014-12) Smith, Jessi L.; Huntoon, Meghan
Within American gender norms is the expectation that women should be modest. We argue that violating this “modesty norm” by boasting about one’s accomplishments causes women to experience uncomfortable situational arousal that leads to lower motivation for and performance on a self-promotion task. We hypothesized that such negative effects could be offset when an external source for their situational arousal was made available. To test hypotheses, 78 women students from a U.S. Northwestern university wrote a scholarship application essay to promote the merits of either the self (modesty norm violated) or another person as a letter of reference (modesty norm not violated). Half were randomly assigned to hear information about a (fake) subliminal noise generator in the room that might cause “discomfort” (misattribution available) and half were told nothing about the generator (normal condition: misattribution not available). Participants rated the task and 44 new naive participants judged how much scholarship money to award each essay. Results confirmed predictions: under normal conditions, violating the modesty norm led to decreased motivation and performance. However, those who violated the modesty norm with a misattribution source reported increased interest, adopted fewer performance-avoidance goals, perceived their own work to be of higher quality, and produced higher quality work. Results suggest that when a situation helps women to escape the discomfort of defying the modesty norm, self-promotion motivation and performance improve. Further implications for enhancing women’s academic and workplace experiences are discussed.