Exposure to Benevolent Sexism and Complementary Gender Stereotypes: Consequences for Specific and Diffuse Forms of System Justification.

Abstract

Many have suggested that complementary gender stereotypes of men as agentic (but not communal) and women as communal (but not agentic) serve to increase system justification, but direct experimental support has been lacking. The authors exposed people to specific types of gender-related beliefs and subsequently asked them to complete measures of gender-specific or diffuse system justification. In Studies 1 and 2, activating (a) communal or complementary (communal ϩ agentic) gender stereotypes or (b) benevolent or complementary (benevolent ϩ hostile) sexist items increased support for the status quo among women. In Study 3, activating stereotypes of men as agentic also increased system justification among men and women, but only when women's characteristics were associated with higher status. Results suggest that complementary stereotypes psychologically offset the one-sided advantage of any single group and contribute to an image of society in which everyone benefits through a balanced dispersion of benefits.

Seeking structure in social organization: Compensatory control and the psychological advantages of hierarchy.

“…To the extent that hierarchies are commonly the way in which systems are organized, defending the status quo often entails defending hierarchies (Gaucher, Kay, & Laurin, 2010;Kaiser et al, 2013). For example, system justification research demonstrates that even disadvantaged individuals who live in socially-stratified systems will bolster and defend a variety of hierarchies including stratification systems based on gender (Glick & S. T. Fiske, 2001;Jost & Kay, 2005;Laurin, Shepherd, & Kay, 2010), race (Jost, Pelham, & Carvallo, 2002), and economic circumstance (Kay, Czaplinski, & Jost, 2009;Kay & Jost, 2003;Malahy, Rubinlicht, & Kaiser, 2009). From a system justification perspective, therefore, support for hierarchies is often a means of fulfilling the broader motivation to believe that one's social systems are legitimate.…”

To Confront Versus not to Confront: Women’s Perception of Sexual Harassment

“…Moreover, as such beliefs are often covert, they are not perceived as sexist, which hinders any attempt to combat these beliefs (Barreto & Ellemers, 2005). This highlights the need for furthering our understanding of sexism among women given that a factor thwarting social change among discriminated groups of women was the fact that the members of such groups accepted their inferior status, and consequently justified and perpetuated it (Jost & Kay, 2005).…”

Effects of status and outcome on attributions and just-world beliefs: How the social distribution of success and failure may be rationalized

“…Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), which is a contextually sensitive construct (Huang & Liu, 2005;Schmitt, Branscombe, & Kappen, 2003) usually treated as an individual-difference factor. System justification (Jost & Banaji, 1994), another construct related to BJW, has also been measured as a dependent variable in studies manipulating exposure to system-relevant information (Jost & Kay, 2005;Kay & Jost, 2003;McCoy & Major, 2007).…”