Traditional Gender Roles and Backlash Against Female Attorneys Expressing Anger in Court

Abstract

Trial advocacy education often stresses the importance of attorneys expressing arguments with emotion to signal conviction. Yet, female attorneys must approach this advice with caution given potential backlash for expressing emotions traditionally considered masculine, like anger. Two experiments (Study 1, N = 220; Study 2, N = 273) demonstrated that people most likely to endorse traditional gender roles exhibited bias against female attorneys expressing anger in court. Participants were recruited nationally and randomly assigned to view an attorney delivering a closing statement in court who either (1) was a man or a woman, and (2) used a neutral or angry tone. They reported how hirable and effective they perceived the attorneys to be and completed measures of several individual difference factors that are established predictors of endorsement of traditional gender roles: ambivalent sexism, political conservatism, and age. Participants who were more likely to hold traditional gender values (i.e., more benevolently sexist, more politically conservative, and older) were more likely to favor attorneys who conformed to gender norms (i.e., male attorneys who expressed anger relative to no anger) and less likely to favor attorneys who violated gender norms (i.e., female attorneys who expressed anger relative to no anger). Thus, female attorneys are faced with the challenge of walking the line between exhibiting traditionally masculine behaviors that are valued by the legal system-but not so much so that they suffer backlash for violating gender norms.

The Impact of Experienced and Expressed Emotion on Legal Factfinding

“…Participants who were more likely to hold traditional gender norms (i.e., reported more benevolent sexism or were more politically conservative or older) favored male attorneys who conformed to gender norms by expressing anger but exhibited backlash against female attorneys who violated gender norms by expressing anger. These biases did not manifest in those who held less traditional gender norms (Salerno & Phalen 2019b).…”

A randomized controlled trial of a video intervention shows evidence of increasing COVID-19 vaccination intention

“…Specifically, conservatives often see science as needing to conform to beliefs about religious authority and common sense (44), which also provide similar bases for beliefs about hierarchical, traditional gender relations (47). Given the persistence of beliefs about gender and scientific ability (48-51) and findings that violating traditional gender beliefs can induce negative reactions, particularly among political conservatives (52), we test the possibility that the gender of the person delivering a message may affect how the message reaches political conservatives.…”

A systematic review of the ambivalent sexism literature: Hostile sexism protects men’s power; benevolent sexism guards traditional gender roles.

“…Our synthesis proposes that these inconsistencies in stick (punish) responses may be attributed to the type of violation that elicits the backlash, with initial evidence suggesting that negative reactions to deviating women reflect issues of power in HS, especially among men (M. C. Herrera, Exposito, & Moya, 2012; Williams et al, 2017), and the desire to maintain traditional roles in BS (Kahn et al, 2021; Mazzurega et al, 2019; Sakalli-Uğurlu & Glick, 2003; Salerno & Phalen, 2019). Hence, we posit that while HS is involved purely in backlash (rather than reward) responses, BS may be involved in both reward and backlash, thereby reinforcing its insidious power in maintaining gender roles.…”

“…This could be done by systematically assessing the role of HS and BS in eliciting different rewards and punishments in response to different types of women’s gender-related affirmations or violations (power vs. roles) in different domains (e.g., relationships, sexuality). This type of research program should be complemented by corresponding efforts to understand the role of HS and BS in responses to men who confirm or violate patriarchial arrangements, in line with initial evidence that ambivalent sexism may also be related to monitoring men’s behavior (Robnett et al, 2018; Salerno & Phalen, 2019).…”