People report liking women more than men because women are seen as more communal

Evidence

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

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the vault’s prejudice-psychology thread — reframes Allport-era antipathy models of outgroup prejudice when applied to gender.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 761