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Bias in physics peer recognition does not explain gaps in perceived peer recognition

Nature Physics volume 21, pages 524–529 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Gaining recognition as a physics person by peers is an important contributor to undergraduate students’ physics identity and their success in physics courses. Previous research has separately demonstrated that women perceive less recognition from peers than men in their physics courses (perceived peer recognition) and that women receive fewer nominations from their peers for being strong in their physics course than men (received peer recognition). The relation between perceived and received peer recognition for men and women, however, is not well understood. Here we test three plausible models for this relation and find that, for students receiving the same amount of recognition from peers as measured from private nominations on a survey, women report significantly lower perceived peer recognition than men. We did this by conducting a quantitative study of over 1,700 students enrolled in introductory physics courses at eight institutions in the United States. We directly compare student gender, perceived peer recognition and received peer recognition, controlling for race and ethnicity, academic year and major, and course-level variability. These findings offer important implications for testable instructional interventions.

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Fig. 1: Possible quantitative relations between student gender, perceived peer recognition and received peer recognition.
Fig. 2: Men report higher perceptions of their peer recognition than women after controlling for received peer recognition and other demographic variables.

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Data availability

All de-identified data used in this study can be found at https://github.com/msundstrom33/Perceived_vs_Received_Recognition. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

Analysis scripts for this study can be found at https://github.com/msundstrom33/Perceived_vs_Received_Recognition.

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Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (Grant No. DGE-2139899 to M.S.). We thank A. Godwin, E. Stump, M. Dew and A. Heim for meaningful feedback on this work. We also thank E. Brewe, E. Burkholder, D. Doucette, Y. Kalender, A. Loveridge, G. Ponti and C. Tung for their data collection efforts.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Meagan Sundstrom & N. G. Holmes

  2. Department of Physics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Meagan Sundstrom

Authors
  1. Meagan Sundstrom
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  2. N. G. Holmes
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Contributions

M.S. organized the data collection and conducted the data analysis. N.G.H. supervised the project. Both authors contributed to the development of the initial idea, the funding acquisition and writing the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to N. G. Holmes.

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Ethics statement

This research was approved by the Cornell University Institutional Review Board (Protocol ID 0146224) and deemed exempt for board review as research within commonly accepted educational settings and involving educational surveys (Exemption Categories 1 and 2 of the United States Common Rule for Human Subjects Research). Informed consent was obtained from all human research participants.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Physics thanks Robynne Lock, Vashti Sawtelle and Ben van Dusen for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–5, Tables 1–4 and notes.

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Supplementary Data 1

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Source data for Supplementary Fig. 5.

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Sundstrom, M., Holmes, N.G. Bias in physics peer recognition does not explain gaps in perceived peer recognition. Nat. Phys. 21, 524–529 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-025-02789-w

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