We Asked a Psychologist Why So Many Average Men Think They Can Beat a Top Female Athlete in Her Sport

An amateur linksman offers unsolicited swing advice—to a girl who’s a professional golfer and coach. A non-runner is convinced he can smoke a Division I track athlete…until she handily defeats him during one rep of an extended workout. And lower than a month after winning an Olympic bronze medal, Molly Seidel got some marathon advice from a seatmate on her plane. She should train high-mileage, he told her. He even pulled up a spreadsheet to point out her the way it needs to be done.

While women’s sports might finally be gaining more of the respect and a spotlight they deserve—this yr, the ladies’s NCAA basketball championship drew 4 million more viewers than the lads’s, and Caitlin Clark’s jersey became the top-seller for draft picks, ever—high-level female athletes all too commonly still must contend with folks who haven’t gotten the message. Random dudes proceed to attempt to teach them about their sport or, even perhaps worse, imagine they may beat them at it. (Recall that, in 2019, one in eight men surveyed thought that, in the event that they played their absolute best tennis, they may rating some extent off Serena Williams. Yes, Serena Williams, who won 23 Grand Slam titles and 4 Olympic gold medals.)

Perhaps essentially the most glaring examples of this make the news, however it’s likely occurring much more often than we all know. That made us wonder what, exactly, is behind these cases of misplaced bravado and blatant mansplaining. So we turned to an expert who would know: Mitch Abrams, PsyDa sport and clinical psychologist who focuses on anger management, violence prevention, and performance enhancement for athletes.

First of all, there’s absolute confidence this confidence is unjustified at best: “Is a professional runner, pro triathlete, pro tennis player, pro basketball player going to wipe the ground with the typical guy? Absolutely,” Dr. Abrams, who’s worked with athletes from youth as much as collegiate and pro levels, tells SELF. The reason some grown men imagine otherwise—after which speak up about it—may stem from a mix of gender stereotypes and, paradoxically, a of confidence, he says.

From childhood, little boys are typically taught to not doubt themselves, no matter how much they still should learn—they’re coached to talk up and showcase what they do know. But underneath it, they might have low self-esteem, “because everyone tells them they’re alleged to know what they’re doing, and so they don’t have any freaking clue,” Dr. Abrams says. But since they will’t show weakness, they puff out their chests to prove themselves, especially in areas like sports during which they’re “supposed” to have mastery. It starts young, and for some, never stops. “There are lots of boys who turn into men which are just developmentally adolescents,” he says.

What’s more, a lot of those men already spend time chest-puffing and arguing on social media and within the comments section of sports web sites. There, anonymity or at the very least physical distance gives people the liberty to be discriminatory (or worse), and bad opinions are reinforced and rewarded with likes and clicks. These bad takes can then spill out into real life.