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

Rape or Homicide: Which Is Worse?

Some people believe rape is just as serious as homicide, or more serious, contrary to law. We examined the prevalence of this belief and whether it reflects an individual's political ideology and moral foundations. Analyses were based on a national YouGov survey of 1,125 US adults gathered in 2021. We found that only 26% of respondents believed rape was less serious than homicide. Most (61%) believed rape and homicide were equally serious, while 13% believed rape was more serious. Social progressives (particularly progressive women) were more likely than social conservatives to view rape as more serious or just as serious as homicide. However, this tendency was partially offset by the tendency of social progressives to view harm as a key factor in judging the morality of a behavior. We suggest that social progressives view rape more seriously than social conservatives because of their concern for gender inequality, but this concern is partially offset by their concern with harm.

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

In three studies, we tested whether hierarchical preferences could explain differences in punishment recommendations for sexual harassment. Building on research that suggests punishment is used to regulate social hierarchies, we argue that individuals who are motivated to maintain existing hierarchies will treat male perpetrators of sexual harassment with greater leniency, especially when judging perpetrators of high social status. Conversely, we predict that egalitarians-who are motivated to reduce group-based hierarchies-will judge male perpetrators more harshly, especially those of high social status. Given competing theories in the existing literature, we make no predictions about how perpetrator status will affect punishment recommendations overall. Supporting our hypotheses, we found that individuals high on gender system justification and social dominance orientation recommended more lenient punishments to perpetrators. Moreover, an integrative data analysis uncovered an interaction between social dominance orientation and perpetrator status. This interaction was primarily driven by egalitarians, who provided more lenient punishment recommendations to low status perpetrators when compared to high status perpetrators. Contrary to our predictions, we did not find strong evidence that individuals high on social dominance orientation provided harsher judgements to low status perpetrators. Nor did we find strong evidence for a main effect of perpetrator status on punishment recommendations. Taken together, these findings suggest that people punish sexual harassment to bolster or attenuate power structures. This is particularly true of egalitarians, whose emphasis on social equality leads them to judge high status perpetrators of sexual harassment with particular severity.

The Interplay of Strength and Content of Women's Gender Identity, Ambivalent Sexism Targeted at Men, and Attitudes Toward Gender Role Subtypes

In this on-line study of adult women (N = 145), we performed a series of moderation analyses, including women's self-reported gender in-group identification as moderator, their traditional/progressive identity contents as predictors, ambivalent sexism targeted at men and attitudes toward male and female conforming and non-conforming gender roles as outcome variables. We found that both traditional and progressive identity contents were significant predictors of benevolent sexism but did not predict hostile sexism toward men. Moreover, traditional identity contents predicted more negative evaluations of both male and female gender non-conforming roles, while progressive identity contents predicted more positive evaluations of both male and female gender non-conforming roles. The results have also indicated that the less a woman identifies with her gender in-group while having highly traditional identity contents, the lower she evaluates gender non-conforming roles of other women. The present study adds to the existing research on the links between women's gender identity and perceptions of the opposite sex, as well as their evaluations of various gender roles of men and women.