Four experiments found benevolent sexism to be worse than hostile sexism for women's cognitive performance. Experiments 1-2 showed effects of paternalist benevolent sexism and ruled out explanations of perceived sexism, context pleasantness, and performance motivation. Experiment 3 showed effects of both paternalist and complementary gender differentiation components of benevolent sexism. Benevolent sexism per se (rather than the provision of unsolicited help involved in paternalism) worsened performance. Experiment 4 showed that impaired performance due to benevolent sexism was fully mediated by the mental intrusions women experienced about their sense of competence. Additionally, Experiment 4 showed that gender identification protected against hostile but not benevolent sexism. Despite the apparently positive and inoffensive tone of benevolent sexism, our research emphasizes its insidious dangers.Keywords: benevolent and hostile sexism, discrimination, performance and working memory, ingroup identification, sense of competence Sexism is expressed in a variety of ways, some more subtle than others and some more hostile than others. Examples of this attitude are gender-related humor, sexist name-calling, sexual harassment, and employment discrimination. Gender discrimination, like any other type of discrimination, is less and less accepted in our modern societies, and legislation has been designed to promote gender equality. In Europe, for instance, Article 141 of the European Commission's treaty states that any job classification system that is used for determining pay must be based on the same criteria for both men and women and be so written as to exclude any sex discrimination. Nonetheless, even if obvious forms of sexism are often socially condemned, more subtle forms of sexism are not. Worse, they sometimes are promoted, as they may sound positive in tone or even seem gallant or chivalrous. Consider, for instance, a man helping a woman to carry luggage, paying for her meal at a restaurant, or complimenting her caring abilities. One might ask what is wrong with that. The problem is that people do not notice that these behaviors may be threatening. These kinds of behavior might, however, be expressions of paternalism or else might ambivalently flatter women while simultaneously implicitly suggesting their inferiority. Paternalism suggests that men should take responsibility for the welfare of women, who might not be able to carry luggage by themselves, might not earn enough money to pay at the restaurant, and should be remembered for their qualities (warmth) rather than their weak points (competence). In this article, we propose that paternalism as well as the other aspects of benevolent sexism, by suggesting women's lack of ability, are devastating to women's performance. Sexism Versus PatronizingHostile and benevolent sexism often go hand in hand and result in ambivalent attitudes toward women (Glick & Fiske, 1996. Hostile sexism is an obviously antagonistic attitude toward women, who are often viewed as t...