Sex Roles最新文献

There are sharp U.S. political differences in transgender attitudes, with liberals expressing much more favorable attitudes and support for trans-inclusive policies than conservatives. Transgender attitudes likely contribute to numerous public policies that are being passed or considered, including policies that impact transgender health, safety, and well-being. Thus, it is imperative to understand why vast partisan differences in transgender attitudes occur. Here we present two preregistered studies examining whether transgender knowledge (i.e., knowledge about transgender identities, experiences, causes, and health care) differs in Democrats versus Republicans, and whether knowledge mediates political differences in attitudes and policy support (N = 439, Prolific). Participants completed a transgender quiz, followed by measures of transgender prejudice and support for trans-inclusive policies. Democrats had superior transgender knowledge compared to Republicans (ds > 1.39). Further, as predicted, transgender knowledge significantly mediated political differences in transgender prejudice and policy support. Exploratory analyses found that the predicted mediation effects held when knowledge was operationalized in different ways and after adjusting for demographic covariates. These data suggest that knowledge gaps help to explain political differences in transgender attitudes and may stimulate additional work on how to improve such knowledge.

Misogynistic attitudes have surged in the past few years and the “manosphere” – an online milieu promoting toxic and rigid masculinity norms – is often seen as an arena for spreading such ideas. Within the manosphere, manfluencers (i.e., male influencers who espouse misogynistic content and beliefs) are known for trying to persuade men to view women and feminism as a threat to their masculinity and status as men. In this article, we examine how perceived threats to masculine identity as presented by manfluencers affect the formation of young men’s attitudes towards women. In an original survey (N = 2857) with Swedish men, we found that young men who follow more manfluencers are more likely to dehumanize women. In two experiments (N = 597, 630), we presented potentially threatening content from a fictive manfluencer to a group of participants and found that young men exposed to such content were more mistrustful of women and misogynistic, especially if they felt like they had been rejected by women in the past. The results highlight the importance of how social media influencers may increase misogyny among young men. This research has important implications for policymakers and practitioners, who should be made aware of the role manfluencers have in the formation of attitudes toward gender equality.

Objectification theory posits that puberty is likely to be a critical stage for experiencing body shame. Past research on experiences during puberty has largely focused on the association between pubertal timing (i.e., the onset of the process of physical maturation and sexual development) and physical and/or psychological health problems among adolescent girls, whereas less research has considered pubertal tempo (i.e., the rate of physical maturation and sexual development during puberty) among girls and boys and its association with body image variables. Using growth curve models, the present study examined whether pubertal tempo and pubertal timing predicted body shame at three equidistant data collection time-points over a two-year period in a sample of 755 early adolescent boys and girls from Spain (377 girls and 378 boys; M_age = 11.49; SD = 0.67 at Time 1). Although participants, particularly boys, showed a decline in body shame in their transition to adolescence, early maturing girls (i.e., body hair, skin changes, breast growth, and menstruation) were especially vulnerable to experiencing body shame. Boys with a slower rate of pubertal change in body hair and facial hair (beard) growth were also vulnerable to experiencing body shame. Findings showed the different role that pubertal timing and tempo appeared to have among boys and girls in predicting body shame and, in line with the gendered deviation hypothesis, suggests important gender differences in experiencing atypical pubertal development for body image.

Previous work has examined the relations between feminism, feminine gender roles, and body image concerns with inconclusive findings. The purpose of this study was to conduct an updated meta-analysis of the relation between feminist identity and negative embodiment, and to conduct new analyses to test how endorsement of femininity relates to negative embodiment. Through the technique of meta-analysis, we analyzed 80 studies (87 samples, N = 24,308) and 217 effect sizes to examine these associations. The predictor variables were measures of feminist identity and endorsement of femininity. The negative embodiment criterion variables were measures of body dissatisfaction, self-objectification, internalization of cultural body ideals, and disordered eating attitudes. Feminist identity was found to be negatively associated with negative embodiment, but only modestly, with small but significant effect sizes across most variables. Endorsement of femininity was found to be positively associated with negative embodiment, with mostly significant effect sizes ranging from small to large. These findings underscore the importance of considering the roles of feminist identity and traditional gender ideology in the etiology and prevention of women’s experiences of negative embodiment.

Protestors recently repurposed the abortion rights’ mantra, “my body, my choice,” to oppose COVID-19 mandates. But do those who oppose public health mandates fully support the right to choose? We answer this question by using exploratory analyses to identify the unique response patterns underlying support for abortion and COVID-19 mandates in random samples from the United States (Study 1; N = 2,331) and New Zealand (Study 2; N = 33,310). Latent profile analyses revealed a small subgroup in both countries (12.6% and 3.4% of the respective samples) who opposed mandates. Yet contrary to the “my body, my choice” rhetoric seen at anti-mandate protests, they also opposed abortion. Across both studies, those in the Anti-Mandate profile tended to be more religious, conservative, and distrustful of institutions. In Study 2, they were also low on cognitive consistency and high on conspiracy belief. Finally, the Anti-Mandate profile was opposed to free speech critical of both the United States and religion (Study 1), high on sexual prejudice (both studies), unsupportive of progressive protests (but supportive of reactionary protests; Study 2), and likely to vote for conservative parties (both studies). These results reveal the mobilization potential of the anti-mandate movement, uncover important contradictions within its members, and illustrate the nuanced ways in which opposition to gender policies (i.e., reproductive rights) coalesce with reactionary protests.

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdown measures changed many aspects of everyday life. Many anecdotal accounts of changes in people’s self-perceptions as they spent more time alone have been reported. To further explore these accounts, the current study investigated potential shifts between pre- and post-pandemic self-perceptions of gender, sexual, and romantic identities among university students and adults in Canada (N = 342; M age = 22.8, SD = 6.7) during the Summer/Fall 2022. Participants were recruited for a study on changes in self-perceptions, body image, eating pathology, and sexual and gender identities, during the pandemic. Approximately half of participants indicated some change in their identity during the post-pandemic period. Specifically, participants reported changes in their identities related to sexual orientation and romantic attraction orientation, as well as sexual and romantic attraction rated continuously, gender identity, and gender expression. Changes in gender expression and changes in continuously-rated sexual and romantic attraction were more common than changes in identity labels (i.e., sexual and romantic orientation labels and gender identity). Participants also were asked to describe contributors to these changes in an open-text format. Response themes included time to reflect, reduced social interaction, and increased exploration through social media. These findings increase knowledge of the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on self-perceptions and how opportunities for introspection may allow individuals the space to re-conceptualize their gender, sexuality, and romantic identities.

The cultural construal of leadership as masculine impedes women’s attainment of leader roles. This research examined whether adding feminine demands to a leader role relieved the greater stress experienced by women than men in a job interview for a leadership position and considered the processes that mediated women’s less favourable interview outcomes. In a hiring simulation, management students (N = 209; 112 women, 97 men) interviewed for a leader role framed by either stereotypically feminine or masculine role requirements. As shown by the stress biomarker salivary cortisol, the feminine role framing alleviated women’s, but not men’s, physiological stress response during the interview. However, under both masculine and feminine role framing, women, compared with men, reported lesser fit, expected poorer interview performance, appraised greater threat relative to challenge, and evaluated their performance less favourably, as did external raters. An additional vignette study (N = 305; 189 women, 111 men, 5 diverse) found that the feminine role framing increased the leader role’s communal demands but still conveyed strong agentic demands not different from those of the masculine role. In conclusion, although a feminine role framing alleviated women’s physiological stress response, it did not change their less favourable outcomes, as indicated by participants’ self-reports and others’ reports.

Men are reported to prioritise physical attractiveness in potential intimate partners, while women focus on the abilities of potential partners to provide resources. Yet previous research has suggested that these traditional gender differences vary according to national levels of gender equality. Here, we used priming material to manipulate participants’ perceptions of gender equality and examined the effects on self-reported partner preferences, and we also investigated the association between participants’ gender role attitudes and partner preferences. In Study 1 and 2 (n = 224 and 380), participants were presented with priming material that focused on either inequality between the genders in the present day (Inequality Condition) or recent improvements in gender equality (Equality Condition). Contrary to our predictions, the importance that participants placed on the physical traits and resource-gaining potential of partners did not differ between conditions in either study. However, on average, men placed greater emphasis on physical traits and preferred younger partners, and women placed greater emphasis on resource-gaining characteristics and preferred older partners, in line with previous research. In addition, men who reported more positive feminist attitudes placed less emphasis on physical traits, and women who reported more positive feminist attitudes placed greater emphasis on kindness, compared to same-gender participants who scored lower on feminist attitudes. This research suggests that self-reported partner preferences are related to an individual’s feminist attitudes and highlight the challenges of exploring these associations with forced-choice and experimental priming designs.

Gender norms shape expectations for how women and men should behave, and those who deviate from these norms are often punished, both socially and professionally. However, these penalties do not always occur, and sometimes women and men are even rewarded for engaging in counter-stereotypic behaviors. At present, we do not have a clear theoretical understanding of why and when people will react positively or negatively to gender norm violations. In this paper, we combine the predictions of role congruity, status incongruity hypothesis, and expectancy-violation theories to propose a unified theory for predicting reactions to counter-stereotypic women and men. The model proposed here provides an explanation for why both penalties and rewards occur for counter-stereotypic behaviors and explains why women risk penalties for engaging in masculine-stereotypic behaviors, generally, while men are only penalized for a narrow subset of feminine-stereotypic behaviors. This unified framework advances our understanding of reactions to gender norm violations and provides a foundation for future research aimed at identifying and preventing gender inequality in society.

Fatigue is one of the most common health complaints, yet assessing it can be difficult when perceptions of others’ fatigue are distorted by gender bias. This research is the first to examine whether such a bias is present in the perception of men’s and women’s fatigue. Across two studies (total N = 201), perceivers viewed silent videoclips of men and women targets in a social interaction and were asked to estimate each targets’ fatigue. While women reported more fatigue than men, across both studies perceivers rated women as significantly less fatigued than men. Results from Study 2 further suggested that women’s fatigue was significantly underestimated in comparison to their own self-reports of fatigue while men’s fatigue was significantly overestimated in comparison to their own self-reports. To explore whether any differences in ratings of targets’ fatigue were due to targets’ own behavior, we also coded each target for various nonverbal cues that could be associated with fatigue. An examination of these nonverbal cues did not reveal any significant relationships with self-reported fatigue for either men or women targets. However, the more nonverbally expressive/attentive targets were, the less likely they were to be judged as fatigued by perceivers and women targets displayed more expressiveness/attentiveness than men targets, explaining some of the variance in why women’s fatigue was underestimated more than men’s. The current work is the first to document the robust existence of gender bias in the perception of others’ fatigue and points towards interventions to help mitigate these biases in practice.