Angelica Mucchi-Faina

Beyond prejudice as simple antipathy: Hostile and benevolent sexism across cultures

The authors argue that complementary hostile and benevolent components of sexism exist across cultures. Male dominance creates hostile sexism (HS), but mens dependence on women fosters benevolent sexism (BS)--subjectively positive attitudes that put women on a pedestal but reinforce their subordination. Research with 15,000 men and women in 19 nations showed that (a) HS and BS are coherent constructs that correlate positively across nations, but (b) HS predicts the ascription of negative and BS the ascription of positive traits to women, (c) relative to men, women are more likely to reject HS than BS, especially when overall levels of sexism in a culture are high, and (d) national averages on BS and HS predict gender inequality across nations. These results challenge prevailing notions of prejudice as an antipathy in that BS (an affectionate, patronizing ideology) reflects inequality and is a cross-culturally pervasive complement to HS.

When Affective (But Not Cognitive) Ambivalence Predicts Discrimination Toward a Minority Group

ABSTRACT Individuals often hold ambivalent attitudes (i.e., positive and negative attitudes at the same time) toward groups and social categories. The aim of the present research was to examine the differential effects of affective and cognitive dimensions of ambivalence on the (amplification of) responses towards a minority group. We asked 188 students from the University of Perugia to read a short description of a fictitious group of immigrants. After expressing their affective and cognitive attitudes toward the target group, participants received positive, negative, or no supplementary information about this group. Discrimination was assessed by asking participants to allocate to the target group a percentage of a financial support fund for poor people (both Italian and immigrant) living in their regional area. As expected, we found that only affective ambivalence amplified either negative or positive responses toward the group.

Automatic reactions to the labels “minority” and “majority” are asymmetrical: Implications for minority and majority influence

Majority and minority sources usually exert different kinds of influence, which has been ascribed to the fact that the former are socially appreciated while the latter are derogated. In the present research we aimed to determine whether the differing evaluations of minority and majority represent automatic reactions. In two studies participants completed a lexical decision task in which the words “majority” and “minority” were introduced as primes. “Majority” as prime activated a slower recognition of negative than positive words, supporting the idea that the reaction to the term “majority” is primarily positive. The term “minority,” without any supplementary qualification, instead appeared unable to trigger a clear automatic reaction. Implications for social influence research are discussed. This research was supported by a grant from The Italian Ministry of Education and University (PRIN n. 2007PJYAKF_002). The authors contributed equally to this article: their names are listed in alphabetical order.

Minority Influence is Facilitated when the Communication Employs Linguistic Abstractness

An experiment tested the hypothesis that minority influence is enhanced when the source of a persuasive communication employs abstract, as opposed to concrete, language. This hypothesis and the research testing it links ideas from two heretofore separate areas of inquiry: minority influence and linguistic abstraction. It is well known that minority influence increases when the minority is perceived to be consistent. Work on linguistic abstraction has established that when abstract language is used to describe an act, it implies that the act reflects stable, trans-situational characteristics of the actor, whereas concrete language implies that the act reflects isolated, situationally bounded events. We suggest that abstract language therefore conveys greater conviction and thereby increases perceived consistency and, in turn, minority influence. Source (majority, minority) and language abstractness (abstract, concrete) of a persuasive communication were manipulated. Results revealed that a minority (but not a majority) source was seen as more consistent when using abstract (vs. concrete) language. Although there were no differences among conditions on direct influence, a statistically significant interaction was observed for indirect influence: the abstract-minority source had significantly more indirect influence than did the concrete-minority source, whereas the indirect influence of the majority communicator was not affected by language abstractness.

Gender gap e quote rosa: 50/50, l’antitrust della politica

Poiche le donne sono fortemente sottorappresentate nella politica italiana, si propone di introdurre un “antitrust della politica”. Questa scarsa rappresentanza e incostituzionale e distorce al maschile l’agenda politica. Sosteniamo che la scarsa presenza delle donne non puo essere attribuita a una mancanza di competenza o motivazione ma e una conseguenza del metodo di cooptazione. Analizziamo le differenti strategie che sono state usate con successo in altri paesi per ottenere l’equilibrio di genere in politica, sia per via legislativa sia sulla base di quote introdotte volontariamente dai partiti. Nel nostro Paese, tenendo conto dell’attuale debole rappresentanza di donne in parlamento, appare piu percorribile la seconda strada rispetto alla prima. Affermiamo infine che la piu promettente strategia per il sistema italiano e lo “zip” per il quale, in ogni lista elettorale, donne e uomini sono presenti in modo alternato.