An article published in Psychology of Women Quarterly provides another clue to why women are so grossly outnumbered by men in the upper ranks of corporate America: they don’t brag enough.

Montana State University psychologists Jessi Smith and Meghan Huntoon recruited 78 women from a university to write a scholarship application essay promoting either their own or another person’s accomplishments. The researchers found that when participants were asked to violate the “modesty norm” by boasting about their own accomplishments, they displayed decreased motivation and performance.

As Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Hogan’s director of research and innovation, pointed out in his Harvard Business Review article, “Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?”, “because we commonly misinterpret displays of confidence as a sign of competence, we are fooled into believing that men are better leaders than women.”

Check it out: Smith and Huntoon’s article, or Chamorro-Premuzic’s post.