Masculinity Threats Sequentially Arouse Public Discomfort, Anger, and Positive Attitudes Toward Sexual Violence.

Three experiments (N = 943) tested whether men (but not women) responded to gender threats with increased concern about how one looks in the eyes of others (i.e., public discomfort) and subsequent anger that, in turn, predicted attitudes about sexual violence. Consistent with predictions, for men, learning that one is like a woman was associated with threat-related emotions (public discomfort and anger) that, in turn, predicted the increased likelihood to express intent to engage in quid-pro-quo sexual harassment (Study 1), recall sexually objectifying others (Study 2), endorse sexual narcissism (Study 2), and accept rape myths (Study 3). These findings support the notion that failures to uphold normative and socially valued embodiments of masculinity are associated with behavioral intentions and attitudes associated with sexual violence. The implications of these findings for the endurance of sexual violence are discussed.

Men's and women's endorsement of hegemonic masculinity and responses to COVID-19.

Using a gendered psychology of health approach, we examine the effects of the culturally idealized form of masculinity-hegemonic masculinity-for both men and women's health attitudes and behaviors. Using data collected across four studies (N = 805) during the COVID-19 pandemic, we found that stronger endorsement of hegemonic masculinity related to health attitudes antithetical to mitigation strategies (e.g. more engagement in risky behaviors, less support for federal mandates) and evaluations of how political leaders have responded to COVID-19. These effects did not differ by gender suggesting that hegemonic masculinity has implications for both men and women's health.

The Reproducibility Movement in Psychology: Does Researcher Gender Affect How People Perceive Scientists With a Failed Replication?

The reproducibility movement in psychology has resulted in numerous highly publicized instances of replication failures. The goal of the present work was to investigate people's reactions to a psychology replication failure vs. success, and to test whether a failure elicits harsher reactions when the researcher is a woman vs. a man. We examined these questions in a pre-registered experiment with a working adult sample, a conceptual replication of that experiment with a student sample, and an analysis of data compiled and posted by a psychology researcher on their public weblog with the stated goal to improve research replicability by rank-ordering psychology researchers by their "estimated false discovery risk." Participants in the experiments were randomly assigned to read a news article describing a successful vs. failed replication attempt of original work from a male vs. female psychological scientist, and then completed measures of researcher competence, likability, integrity, perceptions of the research, and behavioral intentions for future interactions with the researcher. In both working adult and student samples, analyses consistently yielded large main effects of replication outcome, but no interaction with researcher gender. Likewise, the coding of weblog data posted in July 2021 indicated that 66.3% of the researchers scrutinized were men and 33.8% were women, and their rank-ordering was not correlated with researcher gender. The lack of support for our pre-registered gender-replication hypothesis is, at first glance, encouraging for women researchers' careers; however, the substantial effect sizes we observed for replication outcome underscore the tremendous negative impact the reproducibility movement can have on psychologists' careers. We discuss the implications of such negative perceptions and the possible downstream consequences for women in the field that are essential for future study.

Hegemonic masculinity predicts 2016 and 2020 voting and candidate evaluations.

This work examined whether the endorsement of the culturally idealized form of masculinity-hegemonic masculinity (HM)-accounted for unique variance in men's and women's support for Donald Trump across seven studies (n = 2,007). Consistent with our theoretical backdrop, in the days (Studies 1 and 2) and months (Studies 3 through 6) following the 2016 American presidential election, women's and men's endorsement of HM predicted voting for and evaluations of Trump, over and above political party affiliation, gender, race, and education. These effects held when controlling for respondents' trust in the government, in contrast to a populist explanation of support for Trump. In addition, as conceptualized, HM was associated with less trust in the government (Study 3), more sexism (Study 4), more racism (Study 5), and more xenophobia (Study 6) but continued to predict unique variance in evaluations of Trump when controlling for each of these factors. Whereas HM predicted evaluations of Trump, across studies, social and prejudiced attitudes predicted evaluations of his democratic challengers: Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020. We replicate the findings of Studies 1 through 6 using a nationally representative sample of the United States (Study 7) 50 days prior to the 2020 presidential election. The findings highlight the importance of psychological examinations of masculinity as a cultural ideology to understand how men's and women's endorsement of HM legitimizes patriarchal dominance and reinforces gender, race, and class-based hierarchies via candidate support.

Neural responses to perceiving suffering in humans and animals.

The human ability to perceive and understand others' suffering is critical to reinforcing and maintaining our social bonds. What is not clear, however, is the extent to which this generalizes to nonhuman entities. Anecdotal evidence indicates that people may engage in empathy-like processes when observing suffering nonhuman entities, but psychological research suggests that we more readily empathize with those to whom we are closer and more similar. In this research, we examined neural responses in participants while they were presented with pictures of human versus dog suffering. We found that viewing human and animal suffering led to large overlapping regions of activation previously implicated in empathic responding to suffering, including the anterior cingulate gyrus and anterior insula. Direct comparisons of viewing human and animal suffering also revealed differences such that human suffering yielded significantly greater medial prefrontal activation, consistent with high-level theory of mind, whereas animal suffering yielded significantly greater parietal and inferior frontal activation, consistent with more semantic evaluation and perceptual simulation.

When are people interchangeable sexual objects? The effect of gender and body type on sexual fungibility.

The purpose of this research was to empirically examine the fungibility hypothesis derived from sexual objectification theory. Sexual objectification theorists have suggested that like objects, people, typically women, may be fungible or interchangeable with similar others. Despite its provocative nature and potential adverse psychological consequences, the fungibility hypothesis has yet to be empirically examined. We suggested that women, regardless of body types, but also men with body types that resemble the cultural ideal of attractiveness (e.g., large arms and chests and narrow waists), would be more fungible than men with body types that resemble the cultural average. Participants (n = 66) saw images of average and ideal women and men once before they completed a surprise matching task requiring that they match the bodies and faces that appeared together in the original images. Consistent with hypotheses, we found that women with ideal bodies, women with average bodies, and men with ideal bodies were more fungible (perceivers made more body-face pairing errors) than men with average bodies. Furthermore, it appears that when people are fungible they are interchangeable with people with similar body types. Implications and directions for future research on objectification and fungibility are discussed.

Core American values and the structure of antigay prejudice.

This work presents a new scale to measure conflicting attitudes toward sexual minorities. This scale parallels existing measures of conflicting racial attitudes (anti-Black and pro-Black attitudes; Katz & Hass, 1988). After constructing and validating measures of antigay and progay attitudes, we tested relationships among core American values with racial and sexual minority attitudes. We examined relations among the Protestant Work Ethic (PWE), Traditional Family Ideology (TFI), and egalitarian values with attitudes toward racial outgroups and sexual minorities. The results revealed that both PWE values and egalitarian values predicted anti-Black attitudes. By contrast, endorsement of egalitarian values, but not PWE values, predicted pro-Black attitudes. Results also revealed a similar but distinct pattern among values and heterosexuals' attitudes toward sexual minorities. TFI, but not egalitarian value endorsement, predicted antigay attitudes, whereas both TFI and egalitarian value endorsement predicted progay attitudes. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Power and the creation of patronizing environments: the stereotype-based behaviors of the powerful and their effects on female performance in masculine domains.

This work tested the following hypothesis: When powerful men stereotype their female subordinates in masculine domains, they behave in patronizing ways that affect the performance of their subordinates. Experiment 1 examined the stereotyping tendencies and patronizing behaviors of the powerful. Findings revealed that powerful men who stereotyped their female subordinates (i.e., those who were weakness focused) gave female subordinates few valued resources but much praise. In Experiment 2, low-power participants received resources (valued or devalued positions) and praise (high or low) from a powerful man. Subordinates who were assigned to a devalued position but received high praise (i.e., the patronizing behavior mirrored from Experiment 1) were angry. However, men performed better in the anger-inspiring situation, whereas women performed worse.

Power in stereotypically masculine domains: a Social Influence Strategy X Stereotype Match model.

This work examines the hypothesis that stereotypes of groups to which low-power people belong should influence the perceptions and behavior of powerful people only when those stereotypes are both contextually relevant (e.g., women in masculine domains) and provide information of relevance given powerful people's beliefs about the relation between subordinates and goal attainment. Findings across two studies supported predictions. In a masculine domain, when high-power men were attentive to subordinate weaknesses that may produce thwarts to goal attainment, stereotypes of women defined the contextually relevant shortcomings of women, and stereotype-consistent high-power behaviors ensued. In contrast, when powerful men were attentive to subordinate strengths that may enhance goal strivings, stereotypes of women were uninformative (i.e., did not contain information about relevant strengths); female and male employees were responded to and, in turn, performed and reacted similarly. The implications of these findings for theorizing on the relation between power and stereotyping are discussed.