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A study investigated men and women's attributions of criticism, rejection, and threats to gender status in a fictitious partner conflict scenario in which the victim was either a man or a woman. The results indicated that in the context of a partner conflict scenario that ends in violence, greater perceived threats to gender status are attributed to a female victim who criticizes a man's manhood more than a male victim who criticizes a woman's womanhood. The results also revealed that women attribute greater amounts of criticism/rejection and gender status threat in a victim's statements toward an abuser than men do, regardless of the gender of the victim. Individual differences in gender role stress, ambivalent sexism, and propensity for abusiveness failed to moderate these effects. These results present preliminary evidence grounded in precarious manhood theory that attributions of intention during domestic conflicts differ along gendered lines.

In the United States, women’s persistent gains in structural power may cause backlash among those motivated to preserve the status quo. The proposed study examines the conditions that prompt men and women to endorse sexism and promote gender stereotypes. System justification theory proposes that people are motivated to justify the socio-political system that governs them and threats to the stability of their system can increase individual’s motivated defenses. I expect men to show the strongest motivated defenses when the hierarchy is threatened or viewed as unstable, because to protect group-based interests men will reinforce the legitimacy of the system through stronger endorsement of system defenses. In contrast, women will show the strongest system defenses when the hierarchy is viewed as stable, to avoid feeling trapped in an unchanging system that oppresses them. To test these ideas, 430 men and women were exposed to a gender status hierarchy that was portrayed as stable or unstable and then they responded to several measures of sexism and gender stereotypes. Support for the hypothesis was only found on one measure of gender stereotypes. Men reported more system justifying stereotypes of traditional women in the unstable condition, while women showed the opposite pattern. Exploratory results demonstrate that men’s and women’s reports of agentic stereotypes for traditional and nontraditional women depended on whether they were exposed to a stable or unstable gender hierarchy. Future directions and limitations are discussed in consideration of these exploratory findings.

Sexism tends to be a culturally accepted form of prejudice. I propose the relatively strong trivialization of societal sexism stems from the unique benefits that men receive from the gender status hierarchy, compared to other types of group-based hierarchies. Three studies examined why people, men in particular, trivialize or justify gender bias in relation to other types of group-based biases. Study 1 was a correlational study that examined whether participants downplay the existence and social harm of gender bias in relation to racial, religious, and sexual orientation bias, moderated by participant gender. Participants reported stronger trivialization and denial of gender bias, compared to other three types of bias. Study 2 experimentally tested whether White men’s justifications for gender bias, in relation to racial bias, stems from the dyadic benefits men receive in interpersonal relationships with women. White men high in proximal benefits reported stronger essentialist justifications in the gender bias, compared to the racial bias condition. Study 3 examined whether heterosexual men, compared to heterosexual women and gay men, endorse stronger justifications for gender bias, compared to sexual orientation bias. Heterosexual men endorsed stronger essentialist justifications in the gender bias, compared to the sexual orientation bias condition. Implications of these findings are discussed.