How does emotion regulation in one social context spillover to functioning in another? We investigate this novel question by drawing upon recent evidence that 3 categories underpin the most commonly assessed emotion regulation strategies: disengagement, aversive cognitive perseveration, and adaptive engagement. We examine how these emotion regulation categories during marital conflict are associated with conflict resolution and assess the associated implications for functioning during a subsequent family activity. We also develop and compare observational and self-report measures of emotion regulation. Couples (N = 101) were video-recorded discussing a major conflict and reported on their emotion regulation during the discussion. Couples then participated in a family activity with their 5-year-old child, and reported on the quality of the family experience and responsiveness toward their child. Observational coders rated how much each participant exhibited each type of emotion regulation during the conflict discussion. Greater disengagement and aversive cognitive perseveration were associated with lower conflict resolution, and in turn, less positive experiences and poorer parental responsiveness during the family activity. Greater adaptive engagement had the opposite effects, but only disengagement and aversive cognitive perseveration had independent effects when controlling for the other emotion regulation categories. Finally, observational and self-report measures were only weakly associated, but illustrated the same pattern of effects. These novel findings suggest that emotion regulation strategies have important flow-on effects beyond the context initially enacted. The results also indicate that self-report versus observed measures of emotion regulation reveal similar patterns, but may capture different intrapersonal and interpersonal elements of emotion regulation.

Hostile sexism encompasses aggressive attitudes toward women who contest men’s power and suspicions that women will manipulate men by exploiting their relational dependence. Prior research has shown that these attitudes predict greater aggression toward female relationship partners, but has overlooked the contexts in which such aggression should occur. The present research identified an important contextual factor that determines when men’s hostile sexism is (and when it is not) associated with relationship aggression. Men who more strongly endorsed hostile sexism were more aggressive toward their female partners during couples’ daily life (Study 1) and conflict discussions (Study 2), but only when their female partners were perceived to be, or reported being, low in relationship commitment. These findings show that men who endorse hostile sexism do not always enact aggression toward female partners, but do so in contexts relevant to their fears that women will exploit men’s relational dependence and undermine men’s power.

Protecting men's power is fundamental to understanding the origin, expression, and targets of hostile sexism, yet no prior theoretical or empirical work has specified how hostile sexism is related to experiences of power. In the current studies, we propose that the interdependence inherent in heterosexual relationships will lead men who more strongly endorse hostile sexism to perceive they have lower power in their relationship, and that these perceptions will be biased. We also predicted that lower perceptions of power would in turn promote aggression toward intimate partners. Across 4 studies, men who more strongly endorsed hostile sexism perceived lower power in their relationships. Comparisons across partners supported that these lower perceptions of power were biased; men who more strongly endorsed hostile sexism underestimated the power they had compared with their partners' reports of that power (Studies 1 and 2). These lower perceptions of power, in turn, predicted greater aggression toward female partners during couples' daily interactions (Study 1), observed during couples' video-recorded conflict discussions (Study 2), and reported over the last year (Studies 3 and 4). Moreover, the associations between hostile sexism, power, and aggression were specific to men perceiving lower relationship power rather than desiring greater power in their relationships (Studies 3 and 4), and they were not the result of generally being more dominant and aggressive (Studies 3 and 4), or more negative relationship evaluations from either partner (Studies 1-4). The findings demonstrate the importance of an interdependence perspective in understanding the experiences, aggressive expressions, and broader consequences associated with hostile sexism.

The current research demonstrated that women's adoption of benevolent sexism is influenced by their perceptions of their intimate partners' agreement with benevolent sexism. In 2 dyadic longitudinal studies, committed heterosexual couples reported on their own sexism and perceptions of their partner's sexism twice across 9 months (Study 1) and 5 times across 1 year (Study 2). Women who perceived that their male partner more strongly endorsed benevolent sexism held greater and more stable benevolent sexism across time, whereas lower perceptions of partners' benevolent sexism predicted declines in women's benevolent sexism across time. Changes in men's endorsement of sexism were unrelated to perceptions of their partner's sexist attitudes. The naturalistic change in sexist attitudes shown in Studies 1 and 2 was supported by experimental evidence in Studies 3 and 4: Manipulations designed to increase perceptions of partner's benevolent sexism led women (but not men) to report greater benevolent sexism. Studies 3 and 4 also provided evidence that perceptions of partner's benevolent sexism fosters perceived regard and relationship security in women, but not men, and these relationship factors enhance attitude alignment. Discriminant analyses demonstrated that these effects were specific to women's perceptions of partner's, rather than societal, levels of sexism. In sum, these studies illustrate that women endorse benevolent sexism when they perceive that the reverence and security that benevolent sexism promises women are accessible in their relationships.

Benevolent sexism prescribes that men are dependent on women in relationships and should cherish their partners. The current research examined whether perceiving male partners to endorse benevolent sexism attenuates highly anxious women's negative reactions to relationship conflict. Greater attachment anxiety was associated with greater distress and insecurity during couples' conflict discussions (Study 1), during daily conflict with intimate partners (Study 2), and when recalling experiences of relationship conflict (Study 3). However, this heightened distress and insecurity was attenuated when women (but not men) perceived their partner to strongly endorse benevolent sexism (Studies 1-3) and thus believed their partner could be relied upon to remain invested (Study 3B). These novel results illustrate that perceiving partners to endorse benevolent sexism alleviates anxious women's insecure reactions to relationship threat by conveying partner's continued reliability. Implications of these security-enhancing effects are considered in light of the role benevolent sexism plays in sustaining gender inequality.