海角大神

You鈥檝e heard about the 鈥榞lass ceiling,鈥� but do you know about the glass cliff? If you鈥檙e a woman in a traditionally male job, you probably have. New from Yale University finds that when a person has a high level job traditionally held by the opposite gender, they are judged more harshly for their mistakes.

Getting job with high status isn鈥檛 enough, said Victoria Brescoll, a psychological scientist at Yale University and first author of the study. 鈥淵ou have to keep it.鈥�

Brescoll said she suspected that people who have a job not normally associated with their would be under closer scrutiny and more likely to get in trouble for mistakes.

鈥淎ny mistakes that they make, even very minor ones, could be magnified and seen as even greater mistakes,鈥� she said.

Brescoll鈥檚 research on workplace discrimination involved asking 200 volunteers to read different job-related scenarios in which the high level executive 鈥� police chief, college president, judge 鈥� made a mistake. People who were the non-stereotypical gender were judged more harshly, the researchers found. The volunteers saw them as less competent and deserving of less status. The same was true in other tests with a of an aerospace engineering firm and a chief judge. The results also held true for men who held high level jobs that are normally held by women -- such as president of a women's college.

鈥淭here is an effect called the glass cliff,鈥� Brescoll says. Like the glass ceiling that keeps women from rising higher, the glass cliff is what counter-stereotypical individuals (such as female police chiefs) are in danger of falling from. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 really know, when you鈥檙e a woman in a high status role, how long you鈥檙e going to hang onto it,鈥� she says. 鈥淵ou might just fall off at any point. Our study points to one way that this may happen for women in high-powered male roles.鈥�

The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.