Dumb Talk Among Women: Perceptions Of Its Normativity And How It Is Mediated By Sources Of Self-Esteem

Self-esteem has many implications for how individuals present themselves in social situations. The current study aimed to investigate self-degrading dialog regarding one’s intelligence, termed Dumb Talk (DT), in which women might frequently engage in and view as normative. The tendency for women to degrade their own intelligence may be mediated by the sources that they derive their self-esteem from—particularly the domains of academic competence and approval from others. Female college students were instructed to read a vignette in which three women engaged in DT. When it was the fourth woman’s opportunity to respond, participants were asked to select how she would respond, and were asked about the normativity and social attractiveness of the woman had she responded with DT. Participants completed a measure of contingencies of self-worth that assessed sources of their self-esteem, and a measure of how frequently they engaged in DT. I hypothesized that female participants whose self-esteem was more dependent on social approval would view DT as more normative and would personally engage in it more, and that those whose self-esteem was more dependent on academic ability would perceive DT as less normative and would personally engage in it less. Participants who based more of their self-esteem on social approval thought it was atypical for others to engage in DT but normative for themselves to engage in. Participants whose self-esteem was more dependent on academic ability did not think DT was atypical and actually personally engaged in DT more. These findings suggest that regardless of which sources women derive their self-esteem from, women overall might view DT as a normative behavior.