Belonging and academic engagement are important predictors of women’s retention in STEM. To better understand the processes influencing these outcomes, we investigate how numerical underrepresentation (i.e., token status) triggers social comparison perceptions—concerns that others are comparing oneself to another person—that can undermine women’s STEM outcomes. Across four experiments, female college students recruited via subject pool (Study 1a) and MTurk (Studies 1b–3) read a hypothetical scenario in which another female (Studies 1a–3) or male (Study 2) student performed well or poorly in an engineering course. Findings showed that having token (vs. non-token) status in the course increased social comparison perceptions (i.e., perceptions about being compared to an ingroup peer), which subsequently reduced course belonging (Studies 1a and 1b). Study 2 found that (a) token status increased social comparison perceptions in response to the ingroup (vs. outgroup) peer and (b) social comparison perceptions decreased belonging through stereotype threat concerns, particularly when the peer performed poorly. Study 3 directly manipulated social comparison perceptions to further establish their causal role on negative outcomes and demonstrated that these perceived direct comparisons predicted additional consequences signaling STEM disengagement. Collectively, findings identify a novel process that can diminish belonging and academic engagement for women in STEM. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ’s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843211005447

归属感和学术投入是女性保留在STEM中的重要指标。为了更好地理解影响这些结果的过程，我们研究了数字代表不足（即代币状态）如何触发社会比较观念（担心别人在将自己与他人进行比较），这可能会破坏女性的STEM结果。在四个实验中，通过主题库（研究1a）和MTurk（研究1b–3）招募的女大学生读到了一个假设的场景，其中另一位女性（研究1a–3）或男性（研究2）学生的成绩良好或较差。工程课程。研究结果表明，在课程中具有令牌（相对于非令牌）状态会增加社会比较认知（即，与同组同龄人相比的认知），从而减少课程归属（研究1a和1b）。研究2发现（a）代币状态增加了对内向（相对于外向）同伴的社会比较认识，并且（b）社会刻板印象由于刻板印象威胁而降低了归属感，特别是当同伴表现不佳时。研究3直接操纵了社会比较观念，以进一步确立其对负面结果的因果作用，并证明这些感知的直接比较预测了信号转导STEM脱离的其他后果。总的来说，研究发现确定了一个新的过程，可以减少女性在STEM中的归属感和学术参与度。可在PWQ的网站上找到有关本文的其他在线材料，网址为http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843211005447