A study published online in the Journal of personality and social psychology concluded that men's self-esteem declines when they face their women's success, rather than indulging in their women's achievement glory. When men's partners succeed in a task, men's subconscious self-esteem is still more likely to be hurt, even when they are not competitors with their partners, said study lead author Kate Middleton Ratliff.
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Researchers completed a problem-solving test on 32 couples at the University of Virginia. Men were told that their partner's score could be 12% before or 12% after school. Participants did not receive their own test scores. The news of their partner's success or failure didn't affect how they felt about themselves, which the authors of the study call 'significant self-esteem'. But 'implicit self-esteem' proves that the self-esteem of men who think their partner has scored in the top 12% is significantly lower than that of men who think their partner has scored in the bottom 12%. Ratliff said: 'I'm very clear that it's not really what men say & lsquo; I'm depressed, my partner is doing well. &That's it. The fact that a man doesn't act on his partner doesn't mean that he doesn't look like a fool. It's just self-awareness that hurts their relationship with someone who has had a successful experience. 'these findings also appear in the Netherlands. Dutch men, like American men, feel good about themselves, but when it comes to the success of their wives or girlfriends, they feel bad.
Ratliff, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Florida, said: 'that makes sense. When they do the same thing together, such as trying to lose weight, and his girlfriend does better than him, he may feel threatened. "The evidence shows that men automatically explain that the success of their female partners means their own failure, even if there is no direct competitive relationship between them," Ratliff said. '
At the same time, the researchers found that the success of male partners did not affect women's self-esteem. "We think women hide their partner's success and actually feel good when their partner succeeds," Ratliff said. But we found it wasn't like that. Women's idea may be that they think men's success is expected, so when they succeed, women think it's no big deal. '
Ratliff speculates that these results depend on men's competitive drive. Previous studies have shown that men tend to be more passionate than women. The results of the study may also reflect the growing gender role. Ratliff said: 'our idea is that men should be smart and successful. But when it turns out that women are more successful in some ways, it goes against the notion of men or women in men's eyes. '
Martin Ford, a professor of education at the school of education and human development at George Mason University, called the results' brilliant but disturbing. '. "A lot of people know that men seem to want to turn everything into a competition, so it's not hard to imagine that, to a certain extent, this evolutionary tendency may be quite common among males, even if it's not so dramatic, but it's often unexpected," he said. '