Abstract

The male show-off hypothesis claims that men are more likely than women to show off their abilities and publicly compete. However, the male show-off hypothesis has yet to be tested in a domain where both men and women are consistently involved, such as cooking. To examine showing off and cooking, we assessed the social media behavior of MasterChef reality program contestants both in the U.S. and Australia. We focused on 98 contestants from MasterChef U.S. (m = 52 & f = 46) and 107 contestants from MasterChef Australia (m = 45 & f = 62). For each contestant, we examined the social media content they produced on several popular platforms upon the conclusion of their season. Although we coded several measures, our primary measure was Instagram followers. Contrary to the male show-off hypothesis, in both the U.S. and Australia, the number of followers did not differ significantly between male and female contestants. This result suggests that the male show-off hypothesis may not be valid in all domains.