Confronting Sexism: The Role of Relationship Orientation and Gender

This study examined whether relationship orientation was associated positively with confronting sexism and whether confronting sexism was associated positively with competence, self-esteem, and empowerment for women but not men in stereotypically masculine domains. Men and women undergraduates from a United States Midwestern university (n?=?165) were exposed to a sexist statement during a staged, online interaction. Relationship orientation, confronting (i.e., publically rating the sexist statement as problematic and inappropriate), competence, self-esteem, and empowerment were assessed. Consistent with hypotheses, relationship orientation was associated positively with confronting. Additionally, confronting was associated positively with competence, self-esteem, and empowerment for women but not men. Implications for interpersonal confrontation, relationship orientation, and gender differences in response to everyday sexism are discussed.     

A Stress and Coping Perspective on Confronting Sexism

In this study we tested a stress and coping model of confronting sexism. One hundred fourteen university women completed measures of optimism, cognitive appraisals about the prospects of confronting discrimination (expectations of the costs and benefits of confrontation as well as confrontation-related anxiety), and reported on the extent to which they behaved confrontationally in two recent encounters with sexism. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that an optimistic outlook on life was associated with more benign appraisals of the consequences of confronting discrimination, which in turn was associated with greater reports of confrontational responses to prejudice. This study suggests that silence in the face of prejudice does not necessarily or generally represent contentment with the status quo and emphasizes the importance of understanding how appraisals of the costs and benefits of confronting discrimination relate to this process.     

Reducing Stereotyping Through Mindfulness: Effects on Automatic Stereotype-Activated Behaviors

We assessed whether mindfulness (active categorization) can prevent automatic stereotype-activated behaviors related to the elderly. Eighty participants (mean age = 24.4) were given a set of photographs to prime the dimension Old Age and were asked to categorize them multiple times, to see whether the effect of the prime could be reduced through increased mindfulness. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions, where they were asked to categorize the photographs across (1) four self-generated categories; (2) four assigned categories; (3) a single category—Gender; or (4) a single category—Age. Participants’ walking speed (cf. Bargh et al. 1996, Experiment 2) was then measured, as they moved between the two experimental stations. The results show that greater mindfulness predicted greater walking speed, indicating a decrease in the effect of the automatic stereotype-activated behavior.

Developmental Intergroup Theory: Explaining and Reducing Children's Social Stereotyping and Prejudice

ABSTRACT— Social stereotyping and prejudice are intriguing phenomena from the standpoint of theory and, in addition, constitute pressing societal problems. Because stereotyping and prejudice emerge in early childhood, developmental research on causal mechanisms is critical for understanding and controlling stereotyping and prejudice. Such work forms the basis of a new theoretical model, developmental intergroup theory (DIT), which addresses the causal ingredients of stereotyping and prejudice. The work suggests that biases may be largely under environmental control and thus might be shaped via educational, social, and legal policies.     

How Ambivalent Sexism Toward Women and Men Support Rape Myth Acceptance

The goal of this study was to determine how ambivalent sexism toward women and men are both associated with rape myth acceptance. The Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance scale, Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, and Ambivalence toward Men Inventory were completed by 409 participants. Hostile sexism toward women positively correlated with rape myth acceptance. For benevolent sexism toward women, complementary gender differentiation was positively associated with rape myth acceptance whereas protective paternalism was negatively associated. Benevolent sexism toward men, but not hostile sexism, positively correlated with rape myth acceptance. Further, for female participants higher maternalism toward men corresponded with higher rape myth acceptance. These findings suggest that sexist beliefs toward both women and men are important for understanding the support of rape myths.     

Promoting Safe Driving Behaviors: The Influence of Message Framing and Issue Involvement

This study examined the influence of framing and issue involvement on the intentions of participants to perform safe driving behaviors. It was hypothesized that when participants were involved with the issue, gain messages would increase intentions to perform safe driving behaviors more than would loss messages. To examine this hypothesis, participants were classified as either being high or low in involvement, and then were required to read either a gain or a loss message promoting a particular safe-driving behavior. After reading the message, the participants' agreement with the message, cognitive and affective responses to the message, and intentions to perform the behavior were recorded. The results supported the hypothesis.     

Forgetting by remembering: Stereotype inhibition through rehearsal of alternative aspects of identity

We applied previous research on retrieval-induced forgetting to the issue of stereotype inhibition. All participants learned about a target person who belonged to a stereotyped group, and then practiced retrieving a subset of the target’s characteristics. When participants practiced individuating information about the target, they showed inhibited memory for the target’s stereotypic traits. When participants practiced stereotypic information about the target, they showed inhibited memory for: (a) traits associated with another stereotyped aspect of the target’s identity; (b) individuating traits of the target; and (c) other, unpracticed traits of the target associated with the same stereotype. Stereotype belief moderated these inhibition effects; the more strongly participants believed in the stereotype, the less inhibition of stereotype-relevant traits they showed.     

Integration and Rebirth through Confrontation: Fight Club and American Beauty as Contemporary Religious Parables

This article discusses the religious significance of two recent American films which raise pertinent questions about the nature and quality of human existence, its anxieties and aspirations, at the turn of the millennium. Both David Fincher's Fight Club and Sam Mendes's American Beauty wrestle with the efficacy of confrontation as a means of attaining redemption from the disconnectedness and estrangement that characterise the lives of the protagonists in each of these pictures. The import that the trajectories of the characters have for the film audience will also be examined, insofar as the films are accredited by some viewers with helping to facilitate a remedy to the malaise and disaffection in their lives, which the protagonists exemplify.     

International Students' Personal and Multicultural Strengths: Reducing Acculturative Stress and Promoting Adjustment

International students are often encouraged to cope with acculturative stress by relying on personal and multicultural strengths. The authors explored this assumption by testing personal growth initiative, hardiness, and universal‐diverse orientation as predictors of international students’ acculturative stress and adjustment. Data from 336 international students supported a partially mediated model, such that greater levels of personal and multicultural strengths predicted less acculturative problems, thus leading to better adjustment.     

Weapon Bias: Split-Second Decisions and Unintended Stereotyping

ABSTRACT— Race stereotypes can lead people to claim to see a weapon where there is none. Split-second decisions magnify the bias by limiting people's ability to control responses. Such a bias could have important consequences for decision making by police officers and other authorities interacting with racial minorities. The bias requires no intentional racial animus, occurring even for those who are actively trying to avoid it. This research thus raises difficult questions about intent and responsibility for racially biased errors.     

Co-occurrence of Rape Myth Acceptance, Sexism, Racism, Homophobia, Ageism, Classism, and Religious Intolerance

Rape myth acceptance has been extensively studied. Little research is available, however, on the relationship of this variable to other oppressive belief systems. A sample of 492 male and 506 female college students completed the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale, the Attitudes Toward Women Scale (short form), the Neosexism Scale, the Modern and Old Fashioned Racism Scale, the Modern Homophobia Scale, a modified version of the Economic Belief Scale, the Fraboni Scale of Ageism, and the Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Scale (short form). Because there were no existing measures of intolerance toward multiple religions, the Religious Intolerance Scale was developed for this study (using relevant items from the Godfrey Richman Isms Scale). Findings here suggested that greater racism (both modern and old fashioned), sexism (both modern and old fashioned), homophobia (toward both gay men and lesbians), ageism, classism, and religious intolerance were each associated with greater rape myth acceptance. Moreover, each belief system collectively added to the prediction of rape myth acceptance, although sexism has the highest overlap with rape myth acceptance. Although gender did not moderate the relationship between oppressive belief systems and rape myth acceptance, results, across analyses, did indicate that men reported greater rape myth acceptance than women did. Results point to the interrelatedness of rape myth acceptance, racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ageism, and religious intolerance.     

Culture and Stereotyping Processes: Integration and New Directions

Stereotyping is one of the largest and most enduring research areas in social and personality psychology; many of the processes by which stereotypes are formed, maintained, and applied are now well understood. Yet, little is known about the degree to which stereotyping processes apply outside of North American and Western European contexts. This theoretical paper aims to serve as a starting point for researchers interested in the intersection of culture and stereotyping. We review the nascent literature documenting similarities and differences in intergroup perception across cultural groups and note areas in which the cross-cultural and stereotyping literatures have explored common mechanisms that could be profitably integrated. Finally, we offer suggestions for future research that will greatly improve our understanding of how culturally influenced cognitive tendencies influence the perception of social groups and their members.     

Framing decisions: Hypothetical and real

This paper addresses the general issue of whether the practice of investigating human decision making in hypothetical choice situations is at all warranted, or under what conditions. A particularly relevant factor that affects the match between real decisions and hypothetical decisions is the importance of a decision’s consequences. In the literature experimental gambles tend to confound the reality of the decision situation with the size of the payoffs: hypothetical decisions tend to offer large payoffs, and real decisions tend to offer only small payoffs. Using the well-known framing effect (a tendency of risk-aversion for gains and of risk-seeking for losses) we find that the framing effect depends on payoff size but hypothetical choices match real choices for small as well as large payoffs. These results appear paradoxical unless size of incentive is clearly distinguished from the reality status of decision (real versus hypothetical). Since the field lacks a general theory of when hypothetical decisions match real decisions, the discussion presents an outline for developing such a theory.     

Ambivalent Sexism and Religion: Connected Through Values

Sexist attitudes do not exist in a limbo; they are embedded in larger belief systems associated with specific hierarchies of values. In particular, manifestations of benevolent sexism (Glick and Fiske 1996, 1997, 2001) can be perceived as a social boon, not a social ill, both because they are experienced as positive, and because they reward behaviors that maintain social stability. One of the strongest social institutions that create and justify specific hierarchies of values is religion. In this paper, we examine how the values inherent in religious beliefs (perhaps inadvertently) propagate an unequal status quo between men and women through endorsement of ideologies linked to benevolent sexism. In a survey with a convenience sample of train passengers in Southern and Eastern Poland (N?=?180), we investigated the relationship between Catholic religiosity and sexist attitudes. In line with previous findings (Gaunt 2012; Glick et al. 2002a; Ta?demir and Sakall?-U?urlu 2010), results suggest that religiosity can be linked to endorsement of benevolent sexism. This relationship was mediated in our study by the values of conservatism and openness to change (Schwartz 1992): religious individuals appear to value the societal status quo, tradition, and conformity, which leads them to perceive women through the lens of traditional social roles. Adhering to the teachings of a religion that promotes family values in general seems to have as its byproduct an espousal of prejudicial attitudes toward specific members of the family.     

Sexism and racism: one battle to fight

“Top policy-making positions in the American establishment remain in the hands of white males who are not responsive to the needs of the poor, of minorities, or of women.”     

Increased Cognitive Load during Video Game Play Reduces Rape Myth Acceptance and Hostile Sexism after Exposure to Sexualized Female Avatars

The present study investigated how task demand (cognitive load and interactivity) and avatar sexualization in a video game influenced rape myth acceptance (RMA), hostile sexism, and self-objectification. In a between-subjects design, 300 U.S. college students either played or watched someone else play a videogame as either a sexualized or non-sexualized female avatar under high (memorize 7 symbols) or low (memorize 2 symbols) cognitive load. Hypotheses were derived from the limited capacity model of motivated mediated message processing (LC4MP) and perspectives on stereotype processing. Results contradicted hypotheses that greater task demands and sexualization would produce greater RMA, hostile sexism, and self-objectification. Instead, we found that sexualization did not affect these variables. Greater cognitive load reduced rape myth acceptance and hostile sexism for those in the sexualized avatar condition, but it did not affect self-objectification. We discuss these results with respect to the LC4MP and suggest that the processing of stereotype-inconsistent information might be the underlying cause of these unexpected findings. These results provide tentative evidence that cognitively demanding video game environments may prompt players to focus on stereotype-inconsistent, rather than stereotype-consistent, social information.     

Interconnecting Race and Gender Relations: Racism, Sexism and the Attribution of Sexism to the Racialized Other

This article analyzes the way that attitudes about gender and race relations are interconnected. Based on a survey study conducted in Switzerland with a sample of 273 Swiss nationals (125 men and 148 women), it shows that the attribution of a higher level of sexism to “racialized Others” than to Swiss individuals is a racist process resulting in the justification and naturalization of the ordinary Swiss sexism seen in the gendered division of labor. However, this study also shows that the attribution of a higher level of sexism to the Other can be countered by simultaneously adopting both feminist and non-racist attitudes.     

The Danger in Sexism: The Links Among Fear of Crime, Benevolent Sexism, and Well-being

In two studies utilizing undergraduate students at a large public university in the Northeastern U.S., we examined how fear of crime negatively impacts psychological well-being and gender relations. In Study 1, students (N?=?216, 105 female) who indicated higher levels of fear of crime also indicated greater endorsement of benevolent sexism (but not hostile sexism) as well as higher levels of behavioral inhibition and lower self-esteem. In Study 2, fear of crime was manipulated and participants (N?=?115, 73 female) in the crime condition indicated greater endorsement of benevolent sexism, greater behavioral inhibition and lower self-esteem, as compared to participants in a control condition. The implications of the findings for gender relations and psychological well-being are discussed.