Attachment security schemas to attenuate the appeal of benevolent sexism: The effect of the need to belong and relationship security

Previous research has repeatedly shown a positive association between the need for relationship security and the appeal of benevolent sexism. Possibly, no studies to date had investigated the role of the need to belong with respect to a preference for the ideal partner to endorse benevolently sexist attitudes. Attachment security is considered to attenuate the need for relationship security and to divert the focus from the need to belong. Study 1 therefore investigated potential associations among attachment anxiety, the need to belong, and the appeal of benevolent sexism. It also examined whether the association between the need to belong and a preference for the ideal partner to hold benevolently sexist attitudes is moderated by attachment anxiety. In Study 2, we used a causal design to confirm the findings from Study 1 through the activation of attachment security schema. A moderated regression analysis showed significant interactive effects between the need to belong and attachment anxiety-that is, a positive association between the need to belong and the appeal of benevolent sexism was found only among people high in attachment anxiety. Secure-base scripts attenuated the need to belong as well as the appeal of benevolent sexism. The present findings suggest the importance of attachment schemas in influencing preference for specific partner attitudes through the need to belong and relationship security.

Heteronormativity and the Justification of Gender Hierarchy: Investigating the Archival Data From 16 European Countries

Within the framework of the System Justification Theory, this study tested on the archival data from 16 European countries the general hypothesis that homonegativity (HN), as an expression of gender binarism and heteronormativity, works as a legitimizing myth of gender hierarchy. Specifically, we hypothesized that (1) system justification (SJ) would positively relate to HN and (2) this relation would depend on the country level of gender hierarchy, (3) on the gender of respondents, and (4) on the interaction between gender hierarchy and gender. We selected the Gender Equality Index (GEI) as an indicator of the gender hierarchy of the country system and the items from the European Social Survey-Round 9 (ESS-9) as the indicators of the gender of respondents and the levels of SJ and HN. The Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) partially confirmed the hypotheses, suggesting HN to work as a blatant prejudice and being more viable as a legitimizing myth in females from countries with higher gender hierarchy and in males from more gender-equal countries. In both cases, HN serves as a myth to justify the ontological premise of participants that the world is fair and to counteract the cognitive dissonance generated by the perception of a gender-unequal system (in the case of a woman) or by the perception of a gender-equal system that can threaten gender privileges (in the case of a man).