A single New Yorker cartoon launched the study of sexism in social psychology

Evidence

Gender prejudice research began serendipitously, with a cocktail party and a New Yorker cartoon (Helmreich, 1999). Janet Spence and Robert Helmreich met at a party, and both were struck by a cartoon in which a man said to a woman during a dinner date, “You are really stupid. I like that in a woman.” Helmreich had recently found that competent men were liked more than incompetent men, and the two wondered whether the effect would generalize to women. The result was their seminal study, “Who Likes Competent Women?” (Spence & Helmreich, 1972a). — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 746

Categorization

• CANDY: Delightful origin story — a cocktail party and a cartoon joke founding an entire research field — easy to retell in conversation.