Muriel Dumont

Insidious Dangers of Benevolent Sexism: Consequences for Women's Performance

Four experiments found benevolent sexism to be worse than hostile sexism for womens cognitive performance. Experiments 1-2 showed effects of paternalist benevolent sexism and ruled out explanations of perceived sexism, context pleasantness, and performance motivation. Experiment 3 showed effects of both paternalist and complementary gender differentiation components of benevolent sexism. Benevolent sexism per se (rather than the provision of unsolicited help involved in paternalism) worsened performance. Experiment 4 showed that impaired performance due to benevolent sexism was fully mediated by the mental intrusions women experienced about their sense of competence. Additionally, Experiment 4 showed that gender identification protected against hostile but not benevolent sexism. Despite the apparently positive and inoffensive tone of benevolent sexism, our research emphasizes its insidious dangers.

Social Categorization and Fear Reactions to the September 11th Terrorist Attacks

Two experiments were run in The Netherlands and Belgium 1 week after the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. The aim was to investigate whether social categorization affected emotional reactions, behavioral tendencies, and actual behaviors. Results showed that focusing participants’ attention on an identity that included American victims into a common ingroup led them to report more fear and stronger fear-related behavioral tendencies and to engage more often in fear-related behaviors than when victims were categorized as outgroup members. Results are discussed with respect to appraisal theories of emotion and E. R. Smith’s model of group-based emotions.

The dispositional inference strikes back: situational focus and dispositional suppression in causal attribution.

The authors propose that correction of dispositional inferences involves the examination of situational constraints and the suppression of dispositional inferences. They hypothesized that suppression would result in dispositional rebound. In Study 1, participants saw a video of either a free or a forced speaker. Participants shown a forced speaker later made stronger dispositional inferences about a 2nd, free speaker than control participants did. Study 2 provided evidence for higher rebound among participants who reported trying harder to suppress dispositional inferences during the 1st video. In Study 3, participants were asked to focus on situational constraints or to avoid thinking about the speakers characteristics. Only the latter instructions led to a dispositional rebound. These data support the view that the correction of dispositional inferences involves 2 processes that lead to distinct consequences in subsequent attribution work.

Prescription of Protective Paternalism for Men in Romantic and Work Contexts

Behavioral prescription specifies how people ought to act. Five studies investigated prescription for men of protective paternalism, a particular form of benevolent sexism, depending on contextual and individual factors. In Studies 1 and 2, female participants prescribed for men more protective paternalistic behavior toward women in a romantic than in a work context. In Study 3, male participants prescribed the same level of protective paternalistic behavior as female participants did. Conversely, more gender egalitarianism was prescribed for men in a work than in a romantic context (Studies 1–3). In Study 4, the same protective paternalistic behavior was labeled as intimacy in a romantic context but was identified to the same extent as intimacy and as sexism in a work context. In Study 5, female participants’ benevolent sexist beliefs predicted their prescription of protective paternalistic behavior for men in both contexts. These studies demonstrated that prescription of protective paternalism for men is a complex phenomenon because it depends on contextual as well as individual variables. These findings need to be added to the list of factors explaining how this particular form of sexism is maintained within gender relationships and how it contributes to women’s subordination.

Social comparison and group-based emotions

informational: people like to know where they stand in terms of what they think, feel, or do. Are they simply normal or do they happen to be outrageously below orabove widely popularstandards?Often,people alsorely on social comparison to motivate themselves. If getting a kick out of the comparison is the main goal of the comparison then the comparison target is likely to be some person or some group that fares slightly better. Finally, there could also be an explicit attempt at self-enhancement. By finding comparison others who are sufficiently similar yet also somewhat less knowledgeable, strong or likeable than themselves, people make sure that they will come out of the comparison with a feeling of psychological comfort. In short, people’s self-knowledge, motivation, and self-esteem crucially hang on the outcome of dozens of daily comparison operations. Although initially used in interpersonal theory contexts, the social comparison process also comes across as a major player in an impressive series of social psychology theories that focus on intergroup relations. Prominent contributions are for instance relative deprivation theory (Crosby, 1976, 1982; Guimond and Dube´-Simard, 1983; Gurr, 1970; Runciman,1966;VannemanandPettigrew,1972;WalkerandPettigrew, 1984; for a collection, see Walker and Smith, 2002), social identity theory (Tajfel, 1981; Tajfel and Turner, 1979; Turner, 1975), and selfcategorization theory (Hogg and Abrams, 1988; Oakes, Haslam and Turner, 1994; Turner et al., 1987). In all these theoretical perspectives, the selection of a particular social comparison target has been shown to exertamajorinfluenceonpeople’sbeliefs,feelings,and,indeed,behaviors. This analysis holds particularly in the case of self-categorization theory (SCT). SCT is often presented as the direct offspring of social identity

Social comparison and the personal-group discrimination discrepancy

2 This chapter is about the correspondence between the psychology and social reality of devalued group membership. Well-being and the subjective satisfaction with life is, at best, modestly related to the objective conditions in which that life takes place. Often, members of minorities or otherwise devalued groups experience similar levels of self-esteem as members of objectively more privileged groups (for a review, see Crocker & Major, 1989). More surprisingly, they report very low levels of personal discrimination even if they are fully aware of the extent to which their group is discriminated (Crosby, 1982). Thus, it would appear that they perceive themselves as less vulnerable to discrimination than the average member of their group. This discontinuity between judgments of discrimination for self and group has been called the personal-group discrimination discrepancy or PGDD (Crosby, 1982; Taylor, Wright & Porter, 1994). It is a very robust effect that is found in a wide variety The purpose of this chapter is to elaborate on prior work examining the role of social comparison processes in personal and group judgments of discrimination. Prior work has argued that the perceptions of both are determined by the choice of comparison standards. In this chapter we also consider the hypothesis that is being tested with respect to the comparison other and we elaborate what goals and motivations are involved in the social comparison. One of the most significant consequences of social comparison activities is that they can alter what people feel they deserve, whether they feel discriminated against, and what the relevant social categories are that should be considered. This chapter highlights some cognitive and motivational factors that lead to preferring certain social comparison targets over others, the conditions leading to testing either similarity or dissimilarity hypotheses when comparing the self or the ingroup to these targets, and the consequences that this has for self-and group-evaluations in the context of discrimination. The first part of this chapter focuses on personal discrimination and examines why and how social comparison processes contribute to peoples 3 low sense of personal vulnerability to discrimination. The second part of this chapter concentrates on group discrimination and considers why and how social comparison processes contribute to peoples perception of group discrimination and to a sense of relative group deprivation. The argument developed below is threefold. First, we draw on prior research to argue that cognitive and motivational factors lead different comparison standards to …

Positive Prejudice Toward Disabled Persons Using Synthesized Speech Does the Effect Persist Across Contexts

In general, speech-disabled users of synthetic speech are viewed favorably compared to nondisabled users. The authors examined whether situational variables can affect this favorable view. Participants watched an actor deliver a persuasive appeal under conditions where speech (human vs. synthetic), disability status (unspecified vs. disabled), and situation (unspecified vs. telephone campaign) were varied. Perceptions of argument, message, voice, and speaker were assessed. Overall, synthetic speech was disliked but tolerated more when used by a disabled person. The authors also found that positive prejudice toward disabled speakers persisted when they were engaged in a negatively perceived activity. However, if the disabled speaker used synthetic speech for the negative activity, he or she was viewed negatively compared to a disabled speaker using human speech. Overall, the use of synthetic speech by the disabled does not necessarily damage peoples perceptions of them. However, people may express some prejudice when a negative context creates enough ambiguity.

Stéréotypes prescriptifs et avantages des groupes dominants

The prescriptive component of stereotypes is defined as a set of beliefs about the characteristics group members should possess. It has mainly been studied regarding gender stereotypes. We believe that the main function of this prescriptive component is to allow dominant group members to maintain subordinate group members in an advantageous position for themselves. To illustrate our proposal, we present several theoretical and empirical papers, showing that the relative status of social groups is a determinant of which characteristics are prescribed to the members of these groups; that subordinates who fail to conform to the prescription are sanctioned; and that dominants prescribe to subordinates characteristics they see as beneficial to their own group.