Beliefs on Sexual Violence in the Context of System Justification Theory: The Role of Hostile Sexism and Beliefs in Biological Origins of Gender Differences

Abstract

Estimates suggest that around 20% of women may have experienced rape. Various misconceptions about rape (i.e., rape myths) are closely related to victim blaming. In our studies we tested the link between system justification, beliefs in biological origins of gender differences, ambivalent sexism and beliefs concerning sexual violence. Study 1 was conducted among 433 Polish students. The sequential mediation analysis suggests that system justification predicts the level of rape myth acceptance through beliefs in biological origins of gender differences and then hostile (but not benevolent) sexism. In Study 2, conducted among 197 Polish students, we tested the relationship between beliefs in biological origins of gender differences and beliefs concerning sexual violence using experimental design. Contrary to our expectations, students who read the text about social origins of gender differences perceived the survivor of a hypothetical acquaintance rape as less credible, and proposed a lower sentence for a stranger rape perpetrator, compared to participants who read about biological origins of gender differences. We suspect that this is due to experiencing reactance when confronted with social explanations of gender differences. We discuss implications for research and policy.

The Influence of Victim Gender on Perception of Economic Abuse

“…That is, participants with higher hostile sexism were likely to blame the female victim who was abused by a male partner as well as the male victim who was abused by a female partner. Hostile sexism generally consists of negative views of women and portrays women as trying to take advantage of men by overtaking men's power (Łys et al, 2021;Rollero & Tartaglia, 2019). In addition to asking about these general hostile sexism views, some of the items of the hostile sexism subscale evaluated the participants' perceptions of women who are "easily offended," "fail to appreciate all that men do for them," "exaggerate problems," and are "not reasonable."…”

Myths Concerning Sexual Violence Toward Women in Poland, Hungary, and Norway in the Context of System Justification Theory: The Role of Beliefs in the Biological Origins of Gender Differences and Ambivalent Sexism

“…Both kinds of sexism constitute the belief that men and women inherently differ, but are ambiguous about the source of these differences. Nonetheless, there is some evidence of a link between biological gender essentialism and ambivalent sexism (Keller, 2005; Studzińska & Wojciszke, 2014), as well as other gender-related stereotypes and prejudices, for example lack of support for women’s rights (Skewes et al, 2018; Studzińska & Wojciszke, 2014; Wilton et al, 2018), negative attitudes toward counter-stereotypical election candidates (Swigger & Meyer, 2018), transphobia (Broussard & Warner, 2018; Ching & Xu, 2018; Wilton et al, 2018), perceiving same-gender parenting as unnatural and harmful for children (Pacilli et al, 2017), and rape myth acceptance, which is particularly important in the context of the current study (Łyś et al, 2021a, 2021b Łyś et al, 2021c). These results suggest that sexist beliefs may be rooted in gender essentialist beliefs.…”

Perception of the Presumption of Innocence in the Context of Media Depictions of Violence: The Role of Participant’s Gender, Type of Crime, and Defendant’s Socioeconomic Status

“…Biases related to violence can be explained with system justification theory, which suggests that people are motivated to justify the existing social order, even at the expense of their personal or group interests (Jost & Banaji, 1994; Jost et al, 2004). There is some evidence for a link between system justification and perception of crimes: system justification is linked to rape myth acceptance (Chapleau & Oswald, 2014; Łyś et al, 2023, 2021), rape victim blaming (Ståhl et al, 2010), lack of support for the #MeToo movement (Kende et al, 2020), and lack of support for legislation against hate crimes when the target of a hate crime is a member of a low-status group (Mallett et al, 2011). These results suggest that perception of crimes may be influenced by motivation to preserve the status quo.…”