The Role of Gendered Entitlement in Understanding Inequality in the Bedroom

Five studies (using U.S. samples) examined whether men’s higher entitlement contributes to a sexual pleasure gap that disadvantages women. Participants indicated that men receive more sexual pleasure from their partners, whereas women provide more pleasure (Study 1a). Participants believed that men have more of a right to experience orgasm in both hook-up and relationship encounters and attributed higher negative affect to the male target than to the female target when the target did not experience an orgasm in a sexual scenario (Study 1b). In concert with the idea that pleasure is a privilege that men are perceived as being more entitled to, participants preferred men’s orgasm when forced to choose between the male and the female partner in an orgasm allocation task (Study 1c) and in an experiment (Study 2). Study 3 examined why people believe that men are more entitled to pleasure than women. Men’s higher sense of entitlement as an obstacle to gender equality in sexuality is discussed.

The Role of Gendered Entitlement in Understanding Inequality in the Bedroom

Five studies (using U.S. samples) examined whether men’s higher entitlement contributes to a sexual pleasure gap that disadvantages women. Participants indicated that men receive more sexual pleasure from their partners, whereas women provide more pleasure (Study 1a). Participants believed that men have more of a right to experience orgasm in both hook-up and relationship encounters and attributed higher negative affect to the male target than to the female target when the target did not experience an orgasm in a sexual scenario (Study 1b). In concert with the idea that pleasure is a privilege that men are perceived as being more entitled to, participants preferred men’s orgasm when forced to choose between the male and the female partner in an orgasm allocation task (Study 1c) and in an experiment (Study 2). Study 3 examined why people believe that men are more entitled to pleasure than women. Men’s higher sense of entitlement as an obstacle to gender equality in sexuality is discussed.

The Attitude of Work-Oriented and Family-Oriented Chinese Women Toward the Evaluations Based on the Traditional Positive Stereotype That Women Are Virtuous

People typically reject being negatively stereotyped but overlook the ways in which they are positively stereotyped. The current study focused on the attitude of Chinese women toward being evaluated based on the traditional positive stereotype that women are virtuous; family/work centrality as a boundary condition of these attitudes; and three perceptions that may mediate the link between this type of evaluation and attitudes of women. In experiment 1, female college students were identified as work-oriented or family-oriented based on their responses to a questionnaire regarding their focus on these two domains. They then read a vignette in which a man evaluated a female target under random assignment to one of three conditions, namely: group positive stereotype evaluation, individual positive stereotype evaluation, or unstereotypical positive evaluation. The participants rated how much they liked the female target, as an indicator of their attitude toward evaluations based on the stereotype that women are virtuous. In experiment 2, female college students were classified as work- oriented or family-oriented, and then read a vignette in which a man (the target) evaluated them. They were randomly assigned to the group positive stereotype evaluation, individual positive stereotype evaluation, or unstereotypical positive evaluation. Participants rated how much they liked the male target, as an indicator of their attitude toward evaluations based on the positive stereotype that women are virtuous. Across both studies, ANOVA showed that work-oriented women liked evaluations based on both group and individual stereotypes less than the family-oriented women. Regression-based analyses showed evidence of a mediation process in which work-oriented women viewed the virtuous positive stereotype as implying a prescriptive social demand that women should engage in family roles, resulting in a negative reaction to this type of evaluation.

What’s in a Tweet? Gender and sexism moderate reactions to antifat sexist humor on Twitter

The present study investigated whether antifat sexist humor (compared to antifat sexist statements or control statements), conveyed via Tweets, would impact perceptions of an overweight female target depicted in a workplace harassment scenario. We examined whether gender, antifat attitudes, and sexism would impact joke perceptions and moderate perceptions of the joke-relevant target. Participants (n = 451) were drawn from MTurk and completed the study online. They were randomly exposed to one of three tweet conditions and then read and responded to the harassment vignette, among filler vignettes, before completing sexism and antifat measures. Antifat attitudes unexpectedly shifted as a function of study prime and were thus not considered as a moderator. Results showed that men high in hostile sexism reported a greater likelihood of retweeting/favoriting antifat sexist jokes than men low on hostile sexism or women high in hostile sexism. Individuals high in hostile sexism in the joke condition found the behavior of the target less appropriate, and the behavior of the ostensible perpetrator more appropriate, than those in the control condition and those low on hostile sexism. Similar findings were obtained for benevolent sexism. Findings underscore the power of social media as a vehicle for disparagement humor and its consequences.

A threat in the network: STEM women in less powerful network positions avoid integrating stereotypically feminine peers

Integrating social identity threat and structural hole theories, this work examines how social network positions affect group-based identity threats. For individuals less well positioned to bridge (or “broker”) relations between unconnected friends, stigma-by-association concerns may constrain affiliation with stereotypic targets. Three experiments ( Ns = 280, 232, 553) test whether women (vs. men) in male-dominated STEM (vs. female-dominated) majors avoid befriending a female target with feminine-stereotypic (vs. STEM-stereotypic) interests. Only STEM women with less brokerage (i.e., less ability to manage introductions to unconnected friends) in their existing friendship networks avoided befriending (pilot experiment) and socially integrating (Experiments 1 and 2) feminine- (vs. STEM-) stereotypic targets, despite standardized target similarity and competence. STEM women in particular anticipated steeper reputational penalties for befriending stereotypically feminine peers (Experiment 2). Social identity threat may lead women in STEM—especially those lacking brokerage—to exclude stereotypically feminine women from social networks, reinforcing stereotypes of women and STEM fields.

The brightness dimension as a marker of gender across cultures and age

Universally, female skin color is lighter than male skin color, irrespective of geographical location. This difference is a distinctive and universal adaptive pattern that emerges after puberty. We address whether this sexual dimorphism is cognitively and culturally represented to ground gender. To this end, we examine a non-Western, non-industrialized population, namely the Wichí (Salta, Argentina) and a Western industrialized population (Spain). The two cultural populations included both adults and prepubescent children. Across two experiments, we utilized a novel task with children and adults who had to make a choice for a female (male) target person between two identical objects that differed only in terms of their brightness. The results in both experiments revealed that the children from the two cultural communities choose a lighter colored object for the female target and a darker version of the same object for the male target. This pattern held across cultures irrespective of the age of participants, except for the male Wichí participants. We discuss how sexual dimorphism in skin color contributes to a universal grounding of the gender category, and advance possible explanations as to why Wichi males did not consistently link gender and brightness.

Gender is not simply a matter of black and white, or is it?

Based on research in physical anthropology, we argue that brightness marks the abstract category of gender, with light colours marking the female gender and dark colours marking the male gender. In a set of three experiments, we examine this hypothesis, first in a speeded gender classification experiment with male and female names presented in black and white. As expected, male names in black and female names in white are classified faster than the reverse gender-colour combinations. The second experiment relies on a gender classification task involving the disambiguation of very briefly appearing non-descript stimuli in the form of black and white ‘blobs’. The former are classified predominantly as male and the latter as female names. Finally, the processes driving light and dark object choices for males and females are examined by tracking the number of fixations and their duration in an eye-tracking experiment. The results reveal that when choosing for a male target, participants look longer and make more fixations on dark objects, and the same for light objects when choosing for a female target. The implications of these findings, which repeatedly reveal the same data patterns across experiments with Dutch, Portuguese and Turkish samples for the abstract category of gender, are discussed. The discussion attempts to enlarge the subject beyond mainstream models of embodied grounding. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain’.

Perceived Rights of and Social Distance to People with Alzheimer’s Disease

The present study investigated how laypeople and professionals (N = 185) judge the rights of someone affected with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and whether social distance exists toward this person. Participants completed a questionnaire after reading a vignette describing a target person with an early stage of AD. Half of the participants responded to a female target, the other half to a male target. Results showed that the rights and competencies of the persons are rated high and social distance is exhibited only to a minor degree, although there was a significant difference between the male and female targets. Furthermore, health professionals approved more rights than laypeople, which suggests that there is a need for more detailed information about this disease in the general population.

Gender Differences in Memory for What Others Say About Themselves and Their Family Members

Do women have a recall advantage for what others say? And does it matter what type of information another person shares with them? Women’s greater interdependence in self-construal was predicted to give them an advantage over men in their memory for information shared about close others. In an experimental study, 124 undergraduate students (64 women and 60 men) from a Midwestern university in the United States watched either a videotaped male or female target discussing his or her lifestyle habits, health goals, and family. Participants then completed a surprise recognition test of their memory for what the target had said. Results show men were as accurate as women at remembering personal information shared by the targets, but women more accurately recalled what was said about the targets’ family members. The implications of these findings for various professional relationships are discussed.