The "Feminine Modesty" Effect

Causal attributions were made explaining the outcomes of 48 male and 48female subjects who succeeded or failed on an anagram task. Actual outcome was manipulated by varying the difficulty of the anagram task. Half of the subjects were led to believe their scores and ratings would remain private, whereas the other half were told they would participate in a group discussion about scores and causal explanations. Manipulation of anticipated privacy level had little effect under conditions of success, but after failure female subjects made more modest attributions in the public than in the private conditions. Attributions of males remained constant across public and private failure. Results were interpreted as casting doubt on expectancy explanations for sex differences in causal attributions for task outcome and as supporting a self-presentational analysis.