People report liking women more than men, a pro-female bias that persists implicitly

Evidence

Evidence from nonobvious methodologies dispels concerns that respondents’ positive evaluations of women are contaminated by social desirability or political correctness. Implicit attitudinal measures, such as the Implicit Association Test, assess the strength of association between concepts and positive or negative evaluation without participant awareness (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Research using this method has also obtained more positive evaluation of women than men (Rudman, ch. 7 this volume). Another nonobvious method of assessing gender prejudice involves disguising the purpose of participants’ evaluations. In the Goldberg Paradigm (1968), participants evaluate a product – such as an article or a résumé – ascribed to a person who is identified by a male or female first name. Participants are unaware that the purpose is to detect gender prejudice because they receive only one set of materials in the typical betweensubjects design. In a meta-analysis of 123 such studies, only a very slight bias against women was detected when the findings were summarized across evaluations of many types of materials (Swim, Borgida, Maruyama, & Myers, 1989), and this bias disappears when potential confounding factors (such as associations with specific male and female names; Kasof, 1993) are considered. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 185 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Conceptualizing sexism as antipathy did not prepare researchers for the (originally shocking) finding that men and women alike tend to report favorable beliefs about and attitudes toward “the fairer sex.” In their initial demonstration of the women are wonderful effect, Eagly and Mladinic (1989) found that people viewed women as nicer, more supportive, and interpersonally sensitive, compared with men – in a word, more communal (see also Eagly & Diekman, ch. 2 this volume). As a result, people reported liking women more than they liked men. That is, female communality beliefs were associated with pro-female bias. This was shocking because it suggested the prevalence of reverse sexism – a phenomenon that has been supported even when researchers use implicit methods that do not rely on asking people for their preferences (Rudman & Goodwin, 2004). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 761 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Men’s perspective passes as neutral truth while women’s is read as gendered — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 53; Greater explicit positivity toward women rules out the attitude interpretation of male-name favoritism. — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes,…, 206; People evaluate women more positively than men overall despite sex discrimination. (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Implicit measures show more positive evaluation of women than men #corroborates (0.95) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 185
• People report liking women more than men because women are seen as more communal #expands (0.92) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 761