People of all genders regularly pursue both personal and professional objectives. To the latter, research has documented substantial barriers for women, especially when they make mistakes. As articulated by role congruity theory, their stereotypically communal nature appears at odds with the agentic objectives frequently seen as inherent to the workplace. To the former, though, how are women (versus men) evaluated in pursuit of communal objectives? We propose that observers are more likely to see men (versus women) as less successful after mistakes in the interpersonal realm. Nine preregistered experiments (N = 5400) test this proposition by targeting, specifically, the use of humor. They provide evidence for a process model by which women (versus men) who falter are still seen as more attentive, causing their mistakes to seem less substantial and bolstering downstream evaluations of them. Implications for gender, humor, and mistakes are discussed.

所有性别的人都经常追求个人和职业目标。对于后者，研究记录了女性面临的巨大障碍，尤其是在她们犯错时。正如角色一致性理论所阐明的那样，他们刻板的公共性质似乎与经常被视为工作场所固有的代理目标不一致。然而，对于前者，在追求共同目标时如何评价女性（相对于男性）？我们建议观察者更有可能认为男性（相对于女性）在人际关系领域出现错误后不太成功。九个预注册实验（N = 5400）通过有针对性的测试这个命题，特别是幽默的使用。它们为一个过程模型提供了证据，通过该模型，步履蹒跚的女性（相对于男性）仍然被视为更专注，使她们的错误看起来不那么严重，并支持对她们的下游评估。讨论了对性别、幽默和错误的影响。