Understanding the intersection of gender and cognitive ability on interpersonal outcomes: A multistudy investigation

Drawing from social role theory and ideas tied to the implied communality deficit, we develop a theoretical model explicating that higher cognitive ability women-but not men-are potentially more likely to experience interpersonal detriments. Specifically, we theorize that as an agentic competence attribute, higher cognitive ability is viewed as a gender norm violation for women (but not for men), contributing to perceptions of both heightened interpersonal hostility and lowered communality by their peers; these perceptions, in turn, are theorized to be associated with greater levels of victimization and lower levels of received task- and person-focused help from teammates. Across two multisource studies comprised of 826 individuals nested within 140 work groups, utilizing objective cognitive ability ratings and a mixture of round robin and self-report data, results demonstrated the detrimental interpersonal ramifications associated with higher cognitive ability for women but not for men. Our results paint an important, and difficult, picture for higher cognitive ability women, highlighting several theoretical issues that warrant further investigation and practical challenges to be addressed by organizations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).