Worth the Risk? Greater Acceptance of Instrumental Harm Befalling Men than Women

Abstract

Scientific and organizational interventions often involve trade-offs whereby they benefit some but entail costs to others (i.e., instrumental harm; IH). We hypothesized that the gender of the persons incurring those costs would influence intervention endorsement, such that people would more readily support interventions inflicting IH onto men than onto women. We also hypothesized that women would exhibit greater asymmetries in their acceptance of IH to men versus women. Three experimental studies (two pre-registered) tested these hypotheses. Studies 1 and 2 granted support for these predictions using a variety of interventions and contexts. Study 3 tested a possible boundary condition of these asymmetries using contexts in which women have traditionally been expected to sacrifice more than men: caring for infants, children, the elderly, and the ill. Even in these traditionally female contexts, participants still more readily accepted IH to men than women. Findings indicate people (especially women) are less willing to accept instrumental harm befalling women (vs. men). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications and limitations of our findings.

Himpathy and status: Attitudes to social hierarchy predict reactions to sexual harassment

“…However, this focus prevents us from generalizing our findings to all forms of sexual harassment. It is possible that egalitarians might provide equal or more lenient punishment recommendations for female harassment against men, when compared to those high in SDO, as recent work finds egalitarianism predicts greater sympathy for females [69]. To examine this possibility, future research could investigate whether perpetrator gender interacts with SDO to predict punishment recommendations for sexual harassment.…”