Can women be mansplainers, too? New research published in Psychological Science shows that “unresponsive advice,” often linked to mansplaining, can harm women’s self-perception. Surprisingly, the negative effects—feeling less respected, powerful, and listened to—occurred regardless of the advisor’s gender.
The study was motivated by widespread anecdotal accounts of mansplaining, a term that describes condescending or patronizing explanations often directed at women, particularly in the form of generic and unsolicited advice. Researchers Erik Santoro (a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia Business School) and Hazel Rose Markus (the Davis-Brack Professor in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and co-author of Clash!) aimed to empirically investigate how receiving unresponsive advice affects women’s self-perceptions and interpersonal dynamics.
“This work was initially motivated by reading accounts of women being ‘mansplained to’ when getting advice (see here and here), as well as Hazel’s experiences and those of her women colleagues,” the researchers told PsyPost. “We wanted to explore the effects on women of receiving this type of ‘unresponsive’ advice – which we defined as being unsolicited, generic, and prescriptive. Importantly, we wanted to understand whether, and how, unresponsive advice might perpetuate a broader hierarchy in which men tend to be afforded more status and respect than women in the United States.”
The researchers conducted five studies involving more than 4,000 female participants based in the United States. The methodologies combined imagined scenarios, real-time text-based interactions, and surveys.
For their initial study, the researchers recruited 404 women through Amazon Mechanical Turk, with an average age of 39 years. The participants were asked to imagine a personal problem, such as a relationship breakup, and envision a male friend responding in one of two ways. In one condition, the male friend provided unresponsive advice (e.g., offering unsolicited and generic suggestions), while in the other condition, he asked responsive, open-ended questions. After imagining the interaction, participants rated how they felt about their sense of respect, power, trust, and size of self during the interaction.
The results revealed that women felt less respected, less powerful, less trusting, and diminished in size of self when receiving unresponsive advice compared to responsive questions. These findings highlighted the negative impact of unresponsive communication and set the stage for investigating these dynamics in more realistic settings.
In their second study, the researchers aimed to replicate and extend the findings of Study 1 by testing the effects of unresponsive advice in real-time conversations. The sample for Study 2 included 431 women participants, also recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk.
The women were paired with male conversation partners for live text-based discussions about stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The male participants were instructed to provide either unresponsive advice or responsive, open-ended questions, following carefully crafted scripts to ensure consistency in their responses. For instance, an example of unresponsive advice was: “You’re probably feeling stressed because of the news and social media. You should take breaks from watching or listening to news stories.”
The findings mirrored those of Study 1: women felt less respected, less powerful, less trusting, and smaller in size of self when receiving unresponsive advice compared to responsive questions. This live interaction study reinforced the idea that unresponsive advice negatively impacts women’s self-perceptions in real-time settings.
To investigate whether the gender of the advice giver moderated the effects of unresponsive advice on women’s self-perceptions, Santoro and Markus then recruited a large sample of 1,835 women participants through Prolific. The participants were asked to imagine a professional scenario in which they received either unresponsive advice or responsive, open-ended questions from an equal-rank coworker of a specified gender—either a man (Ryan) or a woman (Sarah). They then rated their feelings of respect, power, size of self, and stereotype threat, as well as their perceptions of gender equality.
The results showed that unresponsive advice negatively affected women’s feelings of respect, power, trust, and size of self, regardless of the gender of the advice giver. However, unresponsive advice from men uniquely heightened stereotype threat, leading women to feel more aware of and concerned about their gender in the interaction.
“We initially thought women would feel less respected, powerful and trusting when receiving unresponsive advice from men than from women,” Santoro and Markus told PsyPost. “But unsolicited, generic and prescriptive advice had similar negative effects on these outcomes regardless of whether it was from men or from women.”
“What was unique to women getting unresponsive advice from men was that women felt greater anticipated stereotype threat – or the perception that one is being seen through the lens of a pervasive group stereotype. In our work, this meant that women were aware of and concerned about gender when receiving this type of advice from men, but not when receiving it from women.”
To isolate the negative effects of unresponsive advice more precisely, the researchers conducted a fourth study in which they compared unresponsive advice to responsive advice (rather than to responsive questions). The sample for this study consisted of 1,619 women participants, recruited through Prolific.
The participants were asked to imagine a workplace scenario in which they received advice from a coworker (either Ryan or Sarah) in one of two styles: unresponsive advice (unsolicited, generic, and prescriptive) or responsive advice (solicited, specific, and tailored to the participant’s concerns). Participants then rated their feelings of respect, power, size of self, sense of belonging, and stereotype threat.
The results demonstrated that unresponsive advice led to significantly lower levels of respect, power, size of self, and belonging compared to responsive advice. Additionally, unresponsive advice from male coworkers heightened stereotype threat, replicating the findings from Study 3. These results confirmed that the unresponsive nature of the advice itself, rather than a comparison to questions, was responsible for the negative outcomes.
For their fifth and final study, the researchers sought to explore the interpersonal consequences of unresponsive advice. They recruited 1,750 women participants through Prolific, with 1,619 responses included after exclusions. The participants imagined a workplace scenario similar to that in Study 4, where they received either unresponsive or responsive advice from a coworker (Ryan or Sarah). Participants then rated their likelihood of seeking advice from men and women coworkers in the future, as well as their perceptions of the advice giver’s typical behavior.
The findings showed that unresponsive advice reduced women’s likelihood of seeking advice from male coworkers in the future. Women were also less likely to approach female coworkers if they had received unresponsive advice from a woman. These results suggested that unresponsive advice erodes trust and communication in professional relationships, regardless of the gender of the advice giver.
“Though this project focuses on one popular cultural phenomenon, it is part of a larger concern with how status is maintained and communicated in society,” Santoro and Markus said. “A phenomenon like mansplaining is one in which a person in an interaction experiences themself as lesser or one down. This experience can likely be identified in other types of interactions and across other social identities including race and ethnicity or social class. And so, mansplaining during advice is part of a larger set of conversational or interactional practices that can maintain existing social divisions, hierarchies, and stereotypes.”
The findings emphasize the importance of responsive communication, particularly in advice-giving contexts. Tailored, solicited advice or open-ended questions that validate and acknowledge the recipient’s concerns can foster respect, trust, and empowerment. By contrast, unresponsive advice—even when well-intentioned—can leave recipients feeling unheard and undervalued.
But, as with all research, there are some limitations. “One important caveat is that our findings are limited to our sample: U.S.-based women,” the researchers noted. “Studying men and those outside of the gender binary will also be important. Only one of our studies involved a live interaction; the other studies involved imagined or recalled interactions. We hope to do more live interaction studies with behavioral outcomes in the future. A final caveat is that we did not study other features associated with mansplaining during advice such as a condescending tone of voice.”
“One long-term goal is to study how mansplaining during advice might influence women’s motivation and achievement in school and work, especially if, as our data suggests, women receive unsolicited, generic and prescriptive advice more often from men,” Santoro and Markus added. “A second long-term goal is to understand why people give this type of advice, and in particular, why some men (and some women) give it. Importantly, we don’t assume ill intent on the part of people giving this advice. In fact, the advice in our studies was not overtly negative.”
The study, “Is Mansplaining Gendered? The Effects of Unsolicited, Generic, and Prescriptive Advice on U.S. Women,” was published November 25, 2024.
