Margaret Foddy

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.

Group-Based Trust in Strangers The Role of Stereotypes and Expectations

Across two studies, we provide evidence for group-based trust in strangers. Specifically, when we offered participants a choice between an unknown monetary allocation made by an in-group (university or major) or an out-group allocator, both of whom had total control over the distribution of an identical sum of money, participants strongly preferred the in-group allocator. This preference occurred regardless of whether the stereotype of the in-group was relatively more positive or more negative than that of the out-group. However, this preference did not persist when participants believed that the allocator was unaware of their group membership. Measures of expected share of the allocators funds support our hypothesis that differential trust of in-group members results from expectations of altruistic and fair behavior toward fellow in-group members rather than from positive stereotypes of the in-group.

Globalization and human cooperation

Globalization magnifies the problems that affect all people and that require large-scale human cooperation, for example, the overharvesting of natural resources and human-induced global warming. However, what does globalization imply for the cooperation needed to address such global social dilemmas? Two competing hypotheses are offered. One hypothesis is that globalization prompts reactionary movements that reinforce parochial distinctions among people. Large-scale cooperation then focuses on favoring ones own ethnic, racial, or language group. The alternative hypothesis suggests that globalization strengthens cosmopolitan attitudes by weakening the relevance of ethnicity, locality, or nationhood as sources of identification. In essence, globalization, the increasing interconnectedness of people worldwide, broadens the group boundaries within which individuals perceive they belong. We test these hypotheses by measuring globalization at both the country and individual levels and analyzing the relationship between globalization and individual cooperation with distal others in multilevel sequential cooperation experiments in which players can contribute to individual, local, and/or global accounts. Our samples were drawn from the general populations of the United States, Italy, Russia, Argentina, South Africa, and Iran. We find that as country and individual levels of globalization increase, so too does individual cooperation at the global level vis-à-vis the local level. In essence, “globalized” individuals draw broader group boundaries than others, eschewing parochial motivations in favor of cosmopolitan ones. Globalization may thus be fundamental in shaping contemporary large-scale cooperation and may be a positive force toward the provision of global public goods.

Global Social Identity and Global Cooperation

This research examined the question of whether the psychology of social identity can motivate cooperation in the context of a global collective. Our data came from a multinational study of choice behavior in a multilevel public-goods dilemma conducted among samples drawn from the general populations of the United States, Italy, Russia, Argentina, South Africa, and Iran. Results demonstrate that an inclusive social identification with the world community is a meaningful psychological construct that plays a role in motivating cooperation that transcends parochial interests. Self-reported identification with the world as a whole predicts behavioral contributions to a global public good beyond what is predicted from expectations about what other people are likely to contribute. Furthermore, global social identification is conceptually distinct from general attitudes about global issues, and has unique effects on cooperative behavior.

The role of observer attitudes in judgments of blame in cases of wife assault

This study examines the importance of observer characteristics in determining blame in cases of wife assault. Four independent variables (observers attitudes toward sex roles, observer sex and age, and victim behavior) were assessed for their influence on the blaming judgments of 128 participants. Subjects completed a questionnaire that contained demographic items and six wife assault vignettes that varied in level of victim provocation (low or high). Questions about blame of the husband and wife followed each vignette. An attitudes toward women scale (AWS-B) was then administered. The main hypothesis, that subjects with traditional attitudes would blame the victim more and the perpetrator less for the assault than their egalitarian counterparts, was supported, as was the prediction of an interaction between provocation and AWS-B. The results are discussed in light of the role of observer attitudes in attribution models.

Self-categorization, status, and social influence

The domain of social influence is central to social psychology, and is claimed as a core aspect of the explanatory domain of two important theories: self-categorization theory and the theory of status characteristics and expectation states. In this paper we contrast predictions derived from each theory about the relative influence of group members who differ both on shared category membership and on status characteristics. In the first of two experiments, participants were asked to decide which of four people were most likely to know the correct answer to a task; shared group membership, relative group status, and relevant/irrelevant expertise were varied. We found both status and in-group identity effects. A second experiment provided evidence about the importance of perceptions of relative competence and similarity, as related to shared identity and status, in the influence process.

Social identity change: shifts in social identity during adolescence.

This study investigated the proposition that adolescence involves significant shifts in social identity as a function of changes in social context and cognitive style. Using an experimental design, we primed either peer or gender identity with a sample of 380 early- (12-13 years), mid- (15-16 years), and late-adolescents (18-20 years) and then measured the effect of the prime on self-stereotyping and ingroup favouritism. The findings showed significant differences in social identity across adolescent groups, in that social identity effects were relatively strong in early- and late-adolescents, particularly when peer group identity rather than gender identity was salient. While these effects were consistent with the experience of change in educational social context, differences in cognitive style were only weakly related to ingroup favouritism. The implications of the findings for theory and future research on social identity during adolescence are discussed.

Can gender inequalities be eliminated

In previous work we used a conceptualization of double standards to develop a theory explaining how similar performances may lead to different levels of attributed ability when performers belong to different status groups (e.g., gender, ethnicity). The theory predicts that the effect of double standards will be reduced when objective standards are presented explicitly. Using the dyadic influence paradigm from status characteristics research, we tested three hypotheses: (1) In the absence of performance information, people hold higher performance expectations for males than for females on a male task; (2) contradictory information on performance with explicit standards for ability cancels the effect of gender-based expectations; and (3) the size of the performance difference (magnitude of contradiction) is related to the magnitude of difference in expectations. We measured expectation advantage/disadvantage both directly and through its effect on behavior, namely rejection or acceptance of influence. The results support the hypotheses.

Relative ability, paths of relevance, and influence in task-oriented groups

In task-oriented groups, people accept influence more from others whom they believe, on the basis of diffuse and specific status characteristics as well as prior performances, to have greater ability at the task. Past research has treated difference in ability as a binary variable (better or worse); it is not known whether magnitude of difference in performances translates into relative magnitude of inferred ability, and thence into degrees of differentiation in the status structure of decision-making groups. We conducted an experiment to examine the relative impact of three aspects of task performance on the inference of ability: absolute level of performance, relative performance (better/worse), and the degree of difference in performances by two group members. These variables then were used to predict acceptance of influence in a two-person decision task. Simple binary difference in ability explained 35 per cent of the variance in influence accepted. Degree of difference in ability significantly increased level of prediction, particularly for subjects in the lower range of performance scores, thus supporting the claim that relative and absolute levels of performance create additional differences in expectations. Finally, we propose that a concept of graded status characteristics should be incorporated into status characteristics theory.

Tripartite Self-concept Change: Shifts in the Individual, Relational, and Collective Self in Adolescence

This study investigated changes in the tripartite self-concept in a sample of pre-, early-, mid-, and late-adolescents. Participants provided self-descriptions under conditions that primed either a personal or social context. As expected, adolescents showed fluctuating use of the individual, relational, and collective levels of self. The collective and individual self became more prominent, particularly in later adolescence, while the relational self became less prominent. The individual self became more socially oriented through adolescence, and the relational self shifted focus from the family context in pre-adolescence to the peer context in early adolescence. Implications for theory on self-concept change and on adolescent identity are presented, and highlight the need for further research on the development of social identity in adolescence.