Are People Prejudiced Against Women? Some Answers From Research on Attitudes, Gender Stereotypes, and Judgments of Competence

Disentangling Gender-Based Attitudes from Sexuality-Based Attitude: The Person-Based Approach to Measuring Implicit Attitudes Toward Gay Men and Lesbian Women

In this paper, we present the person-based approach to measuring implicit attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women-this approach uses face stimuli rather than traditionally used symbols, and creates salient social categories through contextual variation techniques. Across 5 experiments using the Go/No Go Association Task (n = 364), we present evidence that the person-based approach can disentangle implicit gender-based attitudes from implicit sexuality-based attitudes, that these attitudes vary as a function of participant gender and sexuality, and that they are different to attitudes elicited by typically used stimuli. We demonstrate that implicit person-based gender attitudes toward straight and gay people are similar and are consistent with the literature (i.e. attitudes toward [lesbian] women are more positive than attitudes toward [gay] men). However, we reveal a reversed pattern of findings for person-based implicit sexuality attitudes (i.e. attitudes toward gay men are more positive than attitudes toward lesbian women). These findings suggest that the person-based approach uniquely captures nuanced implicit attitudes toward gay men and lesbians, raising important questions regarding previous findings.

Hear me out: the role of competent and warm vocal tones in risk communication

Risk communication involves conveying potential risks to the audience. It's crucial for shaping behavior and influencing individual well-being. Previous research predominantly focused on verbal and written aspects of risk communication, with less emphasis on nonverbal cues like vocal tone. Addressing this gap, our study explores the impact of competent and warm vocal tones on risk communication across two risky decision-making paradigms, the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) in Study 1 and the Gambling Task in Study 2. Results show that competent and warm vocal tones are more persuasive than neutral tones, and their effectiveness varies in different decision-making scenarios. Additionally, participants' perceived competence and warmth of vocal tones mediate this persuasiveness. This study enhances our theoretical understanding of risk communication by incorporating the impact of vocal tones. Also, it carries practical implications for marketers and practitioners, demonstrating the importance of using voice as a medium to persuade in real-world scenarios.

The harm hypothesis: How perceived harm to women shapes reactions to research on sex differences

Past research suggests that reactions to research on sex differences are often less positive when the findings put men in a better light than women, especially when the lead researcher is a man. The factors underlying this effect, however, are not yet fully understood. The present study aimed to provide the first experimental test of the hypothesis that the key variable is perceived harm to women. Participants (214 men and 219 women) evaluated a bogus popular-science article reporting fictional research finding either a female- or a male-favouring sex difference in intelligence, attributed to either a female or a male lead researcher. To examine the effects of perceived harm, the introduction to the task highlighted either the potential benefits or potential drawbacks of sex-differences research in general. Consistent with past research, participants reacted less positively to the male-favouring difference, especially for male-led research. Consistent with the harm hypothesis, the effect was stronger after highlighting the potential drawbacks of sex-differences research than after highlighting the potential benefits. Our findings suggest that perceptions of harm to women underpin the aversion to male-favouring findings.

The impact of non-stereotypical gender role endorsement in live broadcasting on consumers' purchase intention

Introduction

Non-stereotypical gender role endorsement is becoming more common in e-commerce live broadcasting. However, there is relatively little research on this topic, and the mechanism of its impact on purchase intention is not yet clear. Based on schema theory and experimental methods, this study explores the impact of non-stereotypical gender role endorsement (compared to stereotypical gender role endorsement) on purchase intention in e-commerce live broadcasting. Besides, we take traditional gender ideology as the moderating variable.

Methods

We first selected experimental materials available for formal experiments through two pre-experiments. Secondly, this study conducted experiments on male/female product groups, respectively. Participants were recruited through the Credamo platform for both experiments.

Results

Experiment 1 indicates that for female product, stereotypical gender role endorsement triggers higher consumer purchase intention compared to non-stereotypical gender role endorsement. The subsequent moderating effect test results manifest that traditional gender ideology plays a moderating role in this effect. Experiment 2 shows that for male product, there is no significant difference in the impact of the two types of endorsement on consumers' purchase intention. In other words, non-stereotypical gender role endorsement does affect consumers' purchase intention, but this effect exists only in female product, and is more significant for consumers with a high level of traditional gender ideology.

Discussion

This study not only has certain theoretical significance for expanding the application boundaries of schema theory and congruence between celebrities and products endorsed, but also has practical significance for brand owners and streamers to effectively adopt non-stereotypical gender role endorsement to enhance purchase intention.

The Roles of Gender and Sexual Orientation in Predicting Reactions to Suitors: Revealing Intersectional Complexities

Relatively little is known about how gender and sexual orientation intersect to predict young adults' responses to unwanted romantic and sexual overtures from men and women suitors. To better understand these potential differences, and explore possible mechanisms that explain them, this pre-registered study used an online questionnaire to assess reactions to both hypothetical and recalled suitors among a sample of 855 cisgender heterosexual and gay young adults (18-35) from the United States. Results revealed that gay women and heterosexual men reported the most negative hypothetical reactions to men (versus women) suitors, while gay women, heterosexual men, and heterosexual women all recalled more negative reactions to men than women suitors. Gay men recalled relatively benign reactions to suitors of both genders. A desire to be seen as one's true orientation was a mediating factor for both gay women's and heterosexual men's negative reactions to men suitors. These findings and their potential explanations highlight the complexity of how gender and sexual orientation intersect to shape responses to romantic and sexual overtures from men and women suitors.

Worth the Risk? Greater Acceptance of Instrumental Harm Befalling Men than Women

Scientific and organizational interventions often involve trade-offs whereby they benefit some but entail costs to others (i.e., instrumental harm; IH). We hypothesized that the gender of the persons incurring those costs would influence intervention endorsement, such that people would more readily support interventions inflicting IH onto men than onto women. We also hypothesized that women would exhibit greater asymmetries in their acceptance of IH to men versus women. Three experimental studies (two pre-registered) tested these hypotheses. Studies 1 and 2 granted support for these predictions using a variety of interventions and contexts. Study 3 tested a possible boundary condition of these asymmetries using contexts in which women have traditionally been expected to sacrifice more than men: caring for infants, children, the elderly, and the ill. Even in these traditionally female contexts, participants still more readily accepted IH to men than women. Findings indicate people (especially women) are less willing to accept instrumental harm befalling women (vs. men). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications and limitations of our findings.

Women Are Perceived to Have More Power Than Men in Domains That Are Viewed As Important in U.S. Tweets

Previous research of gender differences in power has largely focused on the public domain (e.g., leadership positions), and to a lesser extent power on the private domain (e.g., power in private relationships), where people may perceive these domains to be more or less important in their lives. We studied gender differences in preference weighted power (PWP) in different domains by weighting the perceived power by the perceived importance in life in a large set of Twitter messages from the United States (N = 9,286,471). The results showed that men (tweets including "he") are semantically related to general power, and women (tweets including "she") are related to importance in life, which in previous research have been connected to the public and private domains, respectively. Importantly, women had higher PWP than men. In conclusion, men are perceived to have more general power and women more PWP in U.S. tweets.

Gender Stereotypes Selectively Affect the Remembering of Highly Valued Professions

This study includes two experiments designed to assess the effects of occupational gender-related stereotypes on information processing and memory performance. These two experiments were conducted in two separate cohorts of undergraduate students (N = 107 and N = 96, respectively). In each of them, we assessed (and confirmed) the presence of an implicit association preferentially linking high status attributes to men using the Implicit Association Test (IAT). We also assessed the effective incorporation of this association into gender-schemata and its consequences for information processing with a memory task that involved remembering the feminine and masculine forms of high or low status professional occupations. Results indicated that, independently of their gender, participants were more likely to forget and less likely to falsely recall the feminine forms of high status professions, whereas the opposite was true for the masculine forms of high status professions. The magnitude of these memory biases was correlated with the IAT scores. Moreover, in agreement with the predictions of gender-schemata theory, these memory biases (and their correlations with IAT scores) were predominantly observed when participants were not adverted that their recall would be evaluated later on (incidental-encoding memory task; Experiment 1), but less so when participants were explicitly instructed to memorize the same feminine and masculine forms of high or low status professional occupations (intentional encoding memory task; Experiment 2). Taken together, these results call into question the notion that gender stereotypes about professional occupations are declining, and they highlight a “men-high-status” association as a major component of these occupational stereotypes.

Gender and the Disparate Payoffs of Overwork

This article presents results from an experimental study of workers tasked with evaluating professionals with identical workplace performances who differed with respect to hours worked and gender, isolating two mechanisms through which overwork leads to workplace inequality. Evaluators allocated greater organizational rewards to overworkers and perceived overworkers more favorably compared to full-time workers who performed similarly in less time, a practice that disproportionately rewards men over equivalently performing, more efficient women. Additionally, the magnitude of the overwork premium is greater for men than for women. We then use path analyses to explore the processes by which evaluators make assumptions about worker characteristics. We find overwork leads to greater organizational rewards primarily because employees who overwork are perceived as more committed—and, to a lesser extent, more competent—than full-time workers, although women’s overwork does not signal commitment or competence to the same extent as men’s overwork.

Benevolent and hostile sexism in a shifting global context

The theory of and research on ambivalent sexism - which encompasses both attitudes that are overtly negative (hostile sexism) and those that seem subjectively positive but are actually harmful (benevolent sexism) - have made substantial contributions to understanding how sexism operates and the consequences it has for women. It is now clear that sexism takes different forms, some of which can be disguised as protection and flattery. However, all forms of sexism have negative effects on how women are perceived and treated by others as well as on women themselves. Some of these findings have implications for understanding other social inequalities, such as ableism, ageism, racism and classism. In this Review, we summarize what is known about the predictors of ambivalent sexism and its effects. Although we focus on women, we also consider some effects on men, in particular those that indirectly influence women. Throughout the Review we point to societal shifts that are likely to influence how sexism is manifested, experienced and understood. We conclude by discussing the broader implications of these changes and specifying areas of enquiry that need to be addressed to continue making progress in understanding the mechanisms that underlie social inequalities.

An Alternative Procedure for Subgroup Analyses in the Think Manager–Think Male Paradigm

Abstract. Studies in the think manager–think male paradigm ( Schein, 1973 ) routinely observe gender–leader similarity variation across participant subgroups (e.g., men and women). The traditional use of intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) to measure similarity hinders researchers’ ability to fully understand the nature of these relationships. This article advocates for a regression framework ( Edwards, 1995 ), which avoids problems associated with ICCs. A think manager–think male study based on rating content from Fischbach et al. (2015) was conducted to demonstrate the advantages of this procedure. The results were then compared against the traditional ICC analysis. Overall, it is argued that a regression framework is more useful in testing hypotheses about the relationship between participant characteristics and gender–leader similarity than ICCs.

Trash talk about the other gender: Content of, reactions to, and willingness to confront stereotypical comments about men and women

We examined the content of and reactions to stereotypical comments about men and women. In Study 1, daily comments participants recalled hearing people make about “what men/women are like” were generally negative and targeted the other gender. Men rejected negative comments about both genders, whereas women rejected negative comments about women more than comments about men. In Study 2, college participants could confront an online interaction partner who made an other-gender sexist comment. Women confronted a comment targeting women and had more negative reactions to sexism directed at a woman than at a man; men had equivalent, negative reactions to sexism that did not depend on target gender. Study 3 extended and replicated Study 2 by including both other-gender and same gender sexism. Results showed that (a) women were more attuned to men’s sexism toward women compared to all other types and (b) men responded negatively to sexism about either gender, but were more likely to confront sexism directed at women than sexism directed at men. We suggest that women’s tendency to confront sexism when it targets women but not men may reinforce stereotypes that undermine gender equality.

Our Grandmothers' Legacy: Challenges Faced by Female Ancestors Leave Traces in Modern Women's Same-Sex Relationships

Investigations of women's same-sex relationships present a paradoxical pattern, with women generally disliking competition, yet also exhibiting signs of intrasexual rivalry. The current article leverages the historical challenges faced by female ancestors to understand modern women's same-sex relationships. Across history, women were largely denied independent access to resources, often depending on male partners' provisioning to support themselves and their children. Same-sex peers thus became women's primary romantic rivals in competing to attract and retain relationships with the limited partners able and willing to invest. Modern women show signs of this competition, disliking and aggressing against those who threaten their romantic prospects, targeting especially physically attractive and sexually uninhibited peers. However, women also rely on one another for aid, information, and support. As most social groups were patrilocal across history, upon marriage, women left their families to reside with their husbands. Female ancestors likely used reciprocal altruism or mutualism to facilitate cooperative relationships with nearby unrelated women. To sustain these mutually beneficial cooperative exchange relationships, women may avoid competitive and status-striving peers, instead preferring kind, humble, and loyal allies. Ancestral women who managed to simultaneously compete for romantic partners while forming cooperative female friendships would have been especially successful. Women may therefore have developed strategies to achieve both competitive and cooperative goals, such as guising their intrasexual competition as prosociality or vulnerability. These historical challenges make sense of the seemingly paradoxical pattern of female aversion to competition, relational aggression, and valuation of loyal friends, offering insight into possible opportunities for intervention.

Peers and teachers as the best source of social support for school engagement for both advantaged and priority education area students

Promoting student’s school engagement is a major goal in our society. The literature has shown that students’ proximal sources of social support can play a fundamental role in facilitating this engagement. The purpose of this study was (1) to compare perceived support from four sources (mother, father, teacher, and peers) as a function of two different middle-school student backgrounds, a priority education area and a privileged area; (2) and (3) to examine the contribution of these main sources of social support, either directly or indirectly (through sense of school belonging) to school engagement; and (4) to test whether perceived social support is more strongly related to school engagement, directly or indirectly, among students from priority education school compared to students from the advantaged area. In all, 623 middle-school students (aged 11–16) from either a privileged or priority education area participated in this study. The results showed that the mother was perceived as providing more support, followed by the father, the teachers, and the peers. Students from the priority education area perceived more support from their teachers than their counterparts from the more privileged area did. A path analysis showed that each source of social support, except for maternal support, contributed to school engagement. Peers and teachers emerged as the best source of support for school engagement, having significant direct effects among students from the priority education area and both direct and indirect (through the sense of school belonging) effects among students from the advantaged area. Peer support also appears to have a double-edged effect on school engagement among students in the priority education area. This study contributes to enlightening the phenomenon of school engagement in adolescence by clarifying the role of social support and the related mediating process. Being perceived as an important source of social support by students is not enough to contribute to their sense of school belonging and school engagement.

Reactions to research on sex differences: Effect of sex favoured, researcher sex, and importance of sex-difference domain

Two studies (total N = 778) looked at (1) how people react to research finding a sex difference depending on whether the research puts men or women in a better light and (2) how well people can predict the average man and average woman's reactions. Participants read a fictional popular-science article about fictional research finding either a male- or a female-favouring sex difference. The research was credited to either a male or a female lead researcher. In both studies, both sexes reacted less positively to differences favouring males; in contrast to our earlier research, however, the effect was larger among female participants. Contrary to a widespread expectation, participants did not react less positively to research led by a female. Participants did react less positively, though, to research led by a male when the research reported a male-favouring difference in a highly valued trait. Participants judged male-favouring research to be lower in quality than female-favouring research, apparently in large part because they saw the former as more harmful. In both studies, participants predicted that the average man and woman would exhibit substantial own-sex favouritism, with both sexes predicting more own-sex favouritism from the other sex than the other sex predicted from itself. In making these predictions, participants overestimated women's own-sex favouritism, and got the direction of the effect wrong for men. A greater understanding of the tendency to overestimate gender-ingroup bias could help quell antagonisms between the sexes.

I am a scientist . . . Ask Me Anything: Examining differences between male and female scientists participating in a Reddit AMA session

This article investigates interactions between scientists and the online community Reddit. Given that past research on computer-mediated communication between scientists and the public found that male scientists are typically more popular in online spaces than female scientists, we examined differences in popularity as well as potential gendered differences in communication style. Specifically, we examined 269 Reddit "Ask Me Anything" sessions as well as the comments linked with each session (n = 125,580). Overall, we find that male scientists receive more comments on their sessions, but the score an individual comment receives does not differ by gender. Similarly, we find that the message complexity of the comments does not differ by gender. Taken together, these suggest that Reddit AMA sessions might be an effective platform for both male and female scientists to engage with the public.

Gender Prejudice Within the Family: The Relation Between Parents' Sexism and Their Socialization Values

Gender inequalities are still persistent despite the growing policy efforts to combat them. Sexism, which is an evaluative tendency leading to different treatment of people based on their sex and to denigration (hostile sexism) or enhancement (benevolent sexism) of certain dispositions as gendered attributes, plays a significant role in strengthening these social inequalities. As it happens with many other attitudes, sexism is mainly transmitted by influencing parental styles and socialization practices. This study focused on the association between parents' hostile and benevolent sexism toward women and their socialization values (specifically, conservation and self-transcendence), that are the values parents would like their children to endorse. We took both parents' and children's sex into account in the analyses. One-hundred-sixty-five Italian parental couples with young adult children participated in the study. Parents, both the mother and the father, individually filled in a self-report questionnaire composed of the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory and the Portrait Values Questionnaire. Findings showed that mothers' benevolent sexism was positively related to their desire to transmit conservation values to their sons and daughters. This result was also found for fathers, but with a moderation effect of children's sex. Indeed, the positive relationship between fathers' benevolent sexism and conservation was stronger in the case of sons than of daughters. Moreover, fathers' benevolent sexism was positively associated with self-transcendence values. Finally, fathers' hostile sexism was positively associated with conservation and negatively with self-transcendence. Limitations of the study, future research developments, and practical implications of the results are discussed.

Mean girls, queen bees and iron maidens? Female leadership and accusations of workplace bullying

We examined whether female leaders would be evaluated less favorably compared to male leaders regarding workplace bullying. Previous research has demonstrated that women violating prescriptive gender norms of communality experience backlash, and that female leaders are stereotyped of having a communality deficit. Building on that, we hypothesized (1) more moral outrage against and (2) more intentions to punish a female leader compared to a male leader. We further hypothesized (3) the accusations of workplace bullying against a female leader were going to be judged as more accurate than against a male leader. Further, defendants that stereotypically fit to the crime they are accused of were found to be judged guilty more often. So, we assumed, (4) a suspected bully that is a female leader was going to be judged as less credible, while (2) the suspected victim of a female leader bully was going to be judged as more credible compared to a male leader. Participants (N = 202) read a workplace bullying scenario with a female employee accusing either a female or a male leader of bullying. No effect of gender of suspected bully was found for moral outrage measures, punishment intention judgments, and credibility judgments. Contrary to our predictions, participants found the accusations against the male leader significantly more accurate than against the female leader. Gender and sex-role scores of participants were found to be linked to judgments. Implications for future research are discussed.

How do spouses’ levels of ambivalent sexism predict allocations of household chores? Probing why women still perform most of the work in the U.S

This study’s main objective was to examine whether, in a U.S. sample, ambivalent sexism would show stronger associations with heterosexual husbands and wives’ housework division (hours and proportion) than have previous gender-ideology measures. Unlike earlier conceptions of sexism emphasizing hostile and negative stereotypical views toward women, ambivalent sexism combines the two dimensions of hostile sexism and benevolent sexism (seemingly positive views and behaviors toward women that nevertheless convey underlying paternalistic and patronizing motivations). We hypothesized that male and female respondents high in both hostile and benevolent sexism would report the typical pattern of wives’ housework exceeding their husbands’, whereas those lower in hostile or benevolent sexism would report less housework being performed by wives. Married individuals (N = 249) were recruited via advertisements on Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform and announcements at a university to complete an online survey. Several variables were measured, including own and spouse’s housework hours, hostile and benevolent sexism, and demographic control variables previously associated with housework allocation. An interaction emerged for women, in which those high in benevolent, but low in hostile, sexism reported performing the highest proportion of housework, whereas those low in both forms of sexism performed the lowest proportion. These results provided full or partial support for different aspects of our hypotheses. Men reported greater housework (hours and proportion) the more hours their wife worked outside the house. Discussion examines implications for ambivalent sexism theory, housework sharing, and conceptions of sexism.

Celebrity Couples as Business Families: A Social Network Perspective

We depict Hollywood celebrity couples as business families who participate in the project-based movie production industry, which is a temporary and disaggregated form of organization where skilled individuals are linked to one another through contractual and social relationships. Appearing in Hollywood movies generates celebrity capital, which can be converted into economic capital through involvement in endorsements and other rent-generating activities. Finding projects is facilitated by membership in high-quality social networks, and we consider celebrity marriage as a means of merging two individuals' social networks, which can be mutually beneficial for both parties. We develop and test three hypotheses about the quality of social networks prior to and after marriage and analyze their impact upon celebrities' postmarriage career performance. We contribute to the family business literature by exploring hybridized and adaptive forms of business family in contemporary project industries, which has the potential to enlarge family business scholars' research horizons.

People Judge Discrimination Against Women More Harshly Than Discrimination Against Men - Does Statistical Fairness Discrimination Explain Why?

Previous research has shown that people care less about men than about women who are left behind. We show that this finding extends to the domain of labor market discrimination: In identical scenarios, people judge discrimination against women more morally bad than discrimination against men. This result holds in a representative sample of the US population and in a larger but not representative sample of Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk) respondents. We test if this gender gap is driven by statistical fairness discrimination, a process in which people use the gender of the victim to draw inferences about other characteristics which matter for their fairness judgments. We test this explanation with a survey experiment in which we explicitly hold information about the victim of discrimination constant. Our results provide only mixed support for the statistical fairness discrimination explanation. In our representative sample, we see no meaningful or significant effect of the information treatments. By contrast, in our Mturk sample, we see that providing additional information partly reduces the effect of the victim’s gender on judgment of the discriminator. While people may engage in statistical fairness discrimination, this process is unlikely to be an exhaustive explanation for why discrimination against women is judged as worse.

Gender essentialism and the mental representation of transgender women and men: A multimethod investigation of stereotype content

The growing visibility of transgender women and men in the US challenges a dominant cultural model of gender in which dichotomous sex assigned at birth gives rise to dichotomous gender identity in adulthood. How are these groups - verbally marked as atypical relative to their cisgender counterparts - stereotyped? Moreover, how do gender essentialist beliefs predict the content of such stereotypes? Across four studies with diverse methods of stereotype measurement, we assessed characteristics that cisgender people associate with transgender women and men, comparing these to their stereotypes of cisgender women and men. In our final study, we directly assessed how cisgender people mentally position transgender groups relative to cisgender groups. Across these studies, transgender categories were characterized in less positive ways than cisgender ones, and there was as a lower level of consensus about transgender than cisgender stereotypes. On average, transgender groups were de-gendered relative to cisgender groups, such that transgender women and men were not strongly differentiated on traditionally-gendered stereotype dimensions. Finally, we showed that participants higher in gender essentialism (relative to participants lower in gender essentialism) evaluated cisgender groups more positively and were more likely to stereotype transgender groups based on their sex assigned at birth.

Pushing Back Against the Microaggression Pushback in Academic Psychology: Reflections on a Concept-Creep Paradox

Echoing the 1960s, the 2020s opened with racial tensions boiling. The Black Lives Matter movement is energized, issuing pleas to listen to Black voices regarding day-to-day discrimination and expressing frustrations over the slow progress of social justice. However, psychological scientists have published only several opinion pieces on racial microaggressions, primarily objections, and strikingly little empirical data. Here I document three trends in psychology that coincide with the academic pushback against microaggressions: concept-creep concerns, especially those regarding expanded notions of harm; the expansion of right-leaning values in moral judgments (moral foundations theory); and an emphasis on prejudice symmetry, with the political left deemed equivalently biased against right-leaning targets (e.g., the rich, police) as the right is against left-leaning targets (e.g., Black people, women, LGBT+ people). Psychological scientists have ignored power dynamics and have strayed from their mission to understand and combat prejudice against disadvantaged populations, rendering researchers distracted and ill-equipped to tackle the microaggression concept. An apparent creep paradox, with calls to both reduce (e.g., harm) and expand (e.g., liberal prejudices, conservative moral foundations) concepts, poses a serious challenge to research on prejudice. I discuss the need for psychology to better capture Black experiences and to "tell it like it is" or risk becoming an irrelevant discipline of study.

Perception of workplace social-sexual behavior as sexual harassment post #MeToo in Scandinavia

In this study we examined how people perceive social-sexual behavior of women and men, and how these perceptions were associated with beliefs about the outcomes of the #MeToo movement, sexism, traditional values, and gender equality. In addition, we examined the effect of having experienced sexual harassment on such perceptions. Analyses were performed on a Norwegian snowball social media sample covering 321 women and 168 men, aged 18-59 (M = 33.1). Outcome variables covered perceptions of scenarios that described opposite-sex social-sexual behaviors performed by female and male actors within the workplace environment. Path analysis showed that negative beliefs about the outcomes of the #MeToo movement was the principal predictor for perception of female and male social-sexual behavior as sexual harassment for women and men participants. Traditional values, gender equality, and hostile sexism toward women were all associated with perception of social-sexual behavior as sexual harassment, however the effects of these variables were only indirect and fully accounted for by the effect of negative #MeToo beliefs. For women, having experienced sexual harassment was associated with hostile sexism toward men, but had no effect on the perceptions over and above the effect of the other variables in the model. The predictors on participants' perceptions were highly similar for women and men and for evaluations of female and male actors. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.

Ladies First: Gender Stereotypes Drive Anticipatory Eye-Movements During Incremental Sentence Interpretation

Immediate contextual information and world knowledge allow comprehenders to anticipate incoming language in real time. The cognitive mechanisms that underlie such behavior are, however, still only partially understood. We examined the novel idea that gender attitudes may influence how people make predictions during sentence processing. To this end, we conducted an eye-tracking experiment where participants listened to passive-voice sentences expressing gender-stereotypical actions (e.g., "The wood is being painted by the florist") while observing displays containing both female and male characters representing gender-stereotypical professions (e.g., florists, soldiers). In addition, we assessed participants' explicit gender-related attitudes to explore whether they might predict potential effects of gender-stereotypical information on anticipatory eye movements. The observed gaze pattern reflected that participants used gendered information to predict who was agent of the action. These effects were larger for female- vs. male-stereotypical contextual information but were not related to participants' gender-related attitudes. Our results showed that predictive language processing can be moderated by gender stereotypes, and that anticipation is stronger for female (vs. male) depicted characters. Further research should test the direct relation between gender-stereotypical sentence processing and implicit gender attitudes. These findings contribute to both social psychology and psycholinguistics research, as they extend our understanding of stereotype processing in multimodal contexts and regarding the role of attitudes (on top of world knowledge) in language prediction.

Development of a measure of kindness

In the spirit of the growing developments in positive psychology, there is an increasing interest in how kind people are to each other. Yet, this area lacks any strong psychometric instrument. An initial exploratory study demonstrated that a 40-item questionnaire, completed by 165 people, revealed distinct aspects of kindness when subjected to multivariate analysis. A subsequent study is reported, using the structure of the exploratory results to further clarify the conceptual framework (Study 1). The revised 45-item questionnaire was administered to 1039 individuals from the general British population. Smallest Space Analysis of the variables, supported by Factor analysis, confirmed the hypothesis of two facets to kindness, the psychological source of the action (from principles or empathy), and the form of expression (through psychological involvement or following social prescription. It also revealed an additional general, core kindness, labelled Anthropophilia. Reliable scales derived from the combinations of the two elements from each facet were identified: Affective-Socially Prescribed; Affective-Proactive; Principle-Socially Prescribed and Principle-Proactive. Intercorrelations between the scales revealed that they measure different modes of kindness. Comparisons between male and female respondents provided external validity for the questionnaire. Study 2 (N = 251) reported that the scales measure independent dimensions when correlated with similar and dissimilar concepts.

Gendered Perceptions of Odd and Even Numbers: An Implicit Association Study From Arabic Culture

Previous studies conducted in the United States indicate that people associate numbers with gender, such that odd numbers are more likely to be considered male and even numbers considered female. It has been argued that this number gendering phenomenon is acquired through social learning and conditioning, and that male-odd/female-even associations reflect a general, cross-cultural human consensus on gender roles relating to agency and communion. However, the incidence and pattern of number gendering in cultures outside the United States remains to be established. Against this background, the purpose of this study was to determine whether people from a culture and country very different from the United States (specifically, native Arabic citizens living in the Arabic culture of the United Arab Emirates) also associate numbers with gender, and, if they do, whether the pattern of these associations is the male-odd/female-even associations previously observed. To investigate this issue, we adopted the Implicit Association Test used frequently in previous research, where associations between numbers (odd and even) and gender (male and female faces) were examined using male and female Arabic participants native to, and resident in, the United Arab Emirates. The findings indicated that the association of numbers with gender does occur in Arabic culture. But while Arabic females associated odd numbers with male faces and even numbers with female faces (the pattern of previous findings in the United States), Arabic males showed the reversed pattern of gender associations, associating even numbers with male faces and odd numbers with female faces. These findings support the view that number gendering is indeed a cross-cultural phenomenon and show that the phenomenon occurs across very different countries and cultures. But the findings also suggest that the pattern with which numbers are associated with gender is not universal and, instead, reflects culture-specific views on gender roles which may change across cultures and gender. Further implications for understanding the association of numbers with gender across human societies are discussed.

Nationality dominates gender in decision-making in the Dictator and Prisoner's Dilemma Games

Across a variety of contexts, adults tend to cooperate more with ingroup members than outgroup members. However, humans belong to multiple social groups simultaneously and we know little about how this cross-categorization affects cooperative decision-making. Nationality and gender are two social categories that are ripe for exploration in this regard: They regularly intersect in the real world and we know that each affects cooperation in isolation. Here we explore two hypotheses concerning the effects of cross-categorization on cooperative decision-making. First, the additivity hypothesis (H1), which proposes that the effects of social categories are additive, suggesting that people will be most likely to cooperate with partners who are nationality and gender ingroup members. Second, the category dominance hypothesis (H2), which proposes that one category will outcompete the other in driving decision-making, suggesting that either nationality or gender information will be privileged in cooperative contexts. Secondarily, we test whether identification with-and implicit bias toward-nationality and gender categories predict decision-making. Indian and US Americans (N = 479), made decisions in two cooperative contexts-the Dictator and Prisoner's Dilemma Games-when paired with partners of all four social categories: Indian women and men, and US American women and men. Nationality exerted a stronger influence than gender: people shared and cooperated more with own-nationality partners and believed that own-nationality partners would be more cooperative. Both identification with-and implicit preferences for-own-nationality, led to more sharing in the Dictator Game. Our findings are most consistent with H2, suggesting that when presented simultaneously, nationality, but not gender, exerts an important influence on cooperative decision-making. Our study highlights the importance of testing cooperation in more realistic intergroup contexts, ones in which multiple social categories are in play.

Gender Stereotypes in Natural Language: Word Embeddings Show Robust Consistency Across Child and Adult Language Corpora of More Than 65 Million Words

Stereotypes are associations between social groups and semantic attributes that are widely shared within societies. The spoken and written language of a society affords a unique way to measure the magnitude and prevalence of these widely shared collective representations. Here, we used word embeddings to systematically quantify gender stereotypes in language corpora that are unprecedented in size (65+ million words) and scope (child and adult conversations, books, movies, TV). Across corpora, gender stereotypes emerged consistently and robustly for both theoretically selected stereotypes (e.g., work-home) and comprehensive lists of more than 600 personality traits and more than 300 occupations. Despite underlying differences across language corpora (e.g., time periods, formats, age groups), results revealed the pervasiveness of gender stereotypes in every corpus. Using gender stereotypes as the focal issue, we unite 19th-century theories of collective representations and 21st-century evidence on implicit social cognition to understand the subtle yet persistent presence of collective representations in language.

The potentially conflicted evaluations of others based on their intelligence

Individual differences in intelligence are apparent and likely to come with important interpersonal consequences. We examined (N = 476) how (manipulated) individual differences in intelligence affect likability ratings of men and women. We found that (1) ratings were generally more favorable than unfavorable, (2) the difference between favorable and unfavorable ratings of the female target differed more than those same evaluations of the male target, (3) the favorable evaluation tendency was present across relative intelligence but weakest when the target was smarter than the participant, (4) the smarter target was rated more unfavorably, and (5) the equally smart target was rated more favorably than the less intelligent target. Results suggest that people are somewhat conflicted in their evaluations of those smarter than they are whereas similarly and less intelligent people presented less of an apparent conflict in evaluations.

Stereotyping in the digital age: Male language is "ingenious", female language is "beautiful" - and popular

The huge power for social influence of digital media may come with the risk of intensifying common societal biases, such as gender and age stereotypes. Speaker's gender and age also behaviorally manifest in language use, and language may be a powerful tool to shape impact. The present study took the example of TED, a highly successful knowledge dissemination platform, to study online influence. Our goal was to investigate how gender- and age-linked language styles-beyond chronological age and identified gender-link to talk impact and whether this reflects gender and age stereotypes. In a pre-registered study, we collected transcripts of TED Talks along with their impact measures, i.e., views and ratios of positive and negative talk ratings, from the TED website. We scored TED Speakers' (N = 1,095) language with gender- and age-morphed language metrics to obtain measures of female versus male, and younger versus more senior language styles. Contrary to our expectations and to the literature on gender stereotypes, more female language was linked to higher impact in terms of quantity, i.e., more talk views, and this was particularly the case among talks with a lot of views. Regarding quality of impact, language signatures of gender and age predicted different types of positive and negative ratings above and beyond main effects of speaker's gender and age. The differences in ratings seem to reflect common stereotype contents of warmth (e.g., "beautiful" for female, "courageous" for female and senior language) versus competence (e.g., "ingenious", "informative" for male language). The results shed light on how verbal behavior may contribute to stereotypical evaluations. They also illuminate how, within new digital social contexts, female language might be uniquely rewarded and, thereby, an underappreciated but highly effective tool for social influence. WC = 286 (max. 300 words).

You don't want kids?!: Exploring evaluations of those without children

We examined perceptions of those without children in a pre-registered study. Women who made a conscious decision not to have children (i.e., childfree) and women without children for unknown reasons were evaluated more negatively than mothers and those unable to have children (i.e., childless). Few differences were observed in evaluations of male targets as a function of parental status. Although we expected gender differences whereby childfree women would be evaluated more negatively than childfree men, this was not observed. Evaluations also did not vary as a function of perceiver gender. Those higher in social dominance orientation had more negative evaluations of childfree and childless women operating through ascription to traditional gender roles. The same pattern existed for male targets but was no longer supported when statistically controlling for singlism.

Reactions to male-favouring versus female-favouring sex differences: A pre-registered experiment and Southeast Asian replication

Two studies investigated (1) how people react to research describing a sex difference, depending on whether that difference favours males or females, and (2) how accurately people can predict how the average man and woman will react. In Study 1, Western participants (N = 492) viewed a fictional popular-science article describing either a male-favouring or a female-favouring sex difference (i.e., men/women draw better; women/men lie more). Both sexes reacted less positively to the male-favouring differences, judging the findings to be less important, less credible, and more offensive, harmful, and upsetting. Participants predicted that the average man and woman would react more positively to sex differences favouring their own sex. This was true of the average woman, although the level of own-sex favouritism was lower than participants predicted. It was not true, however, of the average man, who - like the average woman - reacted more positively to the female-favouring differences. Study 2 replicated these findings in a Southeast Asian sample (N = 336). Our results are consistent with the idea that both sexes are more protective of women than men, but that both exaggerate the level of same-sex favouritism within each sex - a misconception that could potentially harm relations between the sexes.

How residents in multifamily housing cope with neighbour noise: The role of attitude towards the neighbours

AIMS

Residents in multifamily housing are considerably exposed to neighbour noise, which can lead to neighbour disputes and even criminal violence. This study investigated how residents' attitudes towards noisy neighbours develop and the role of such attitudes in their reactions to neighbour noise.

METHODS

In-depth interviews were carried out with 57 South Korean residents. The data were collected and analyzed using grounded theory methods. Concepts and categories were identified through open coding and axial coding, respectively.

RESULTS

Residents' attitudes towards the neighbours (i.e., noise source) were grouped into friends, enemies, and strangers/acquaintances. Each attitude formation was influenced by the individual's past experience/history, the attitude shown by the neighbours, and the predictability/certainty of noise exposure. Different attitudes towards the neighbours resulted in different cognitive and behavioural copings.

CONCLUSION

Given that the neighbour noise issue involves the interpersonal relationship between neighbours, the findings extend the scope of existing understanding. The paper suggests that further investigation into coping strategies would have practical implementations for reducing conflict arising from neighbour disputes.

Consequences of Confronting Patronizing Help for People with Disabilities: Do Target Gender and Disability Type Matter?

People with disabilities face a dilemma in dealing with patronizing help: Although accepting unsolicited assistance can incur psychological costs, confronting the helper has been shown to incur interpersonal penalties. The present research explored whether the consequences of confronting patronizing help vary across target gender and disability type. A vignette paradigm introduced participants to various interactions between adults with and without disabilities. Study 1 (N = 137) showed that, when blind targets confronted help that was clearly patronizing, they were rated as ruder and less warm after (vs. before) confronting regardless of their gender. Study 2 (N = 368) showed that, although both blind and wheelchair-using targets were rated as less warm and ruder after (vs. before) confronting, blind targets were penalized more, and patronizing behavior toward blind targets was perceived as more appropriate. These results highlight the importance of considering intersectionality and cross-disability heterogeneity when examining the multifaceted experience of ableism.

Awareness of gender medicine among family doctors. A field investigation

Ample evidence has shown that gender is one of the key determinants of health and illness and that a better understanding of gender-specific determinants can contribute to greater equity and equality in health services, with better health for both women and men. Nonetheless, the androcentric bias prevalent in healthcare makes it difficult to address the needs of either women or men adequately. Strengthening research into gender medicine issues is, therefore, desirable. With the present study, we investigated awareness of gender medicine among practicing primary care physicians and doctors-in-training in primary care and whether sexism affects awareness of gender medicine. Our findings show that there is a need for training programs to enhance gender awareness among both practicing physicians and those in training. Implications for policies are discussed.