Curvilinear sexism and its link to men's perceived spousal value

PMID: 33890521 DOI: 10.1177/01461672211009726

Commentary

This study was designed to test the new hypothesis that men with lower subjective social status and perceived spousal value are relatively less willing to offset high hostile sexism with high benevolent sexism.

The findings show that spousal value mitigates the link between hostile and benevolent sexism among men, regardless of social status.

Men with high perceived spousal value endorsed hostile and benevolent sexism linearly across the attitudinal range, while men with low perceived spousal value exhibited curvilinear sexism.

Study 1 (N = 15,205) established a curvilinear sexism effect and showed it to be stronger for men than for women.

Study 2 (N = 328) and Study 3 (N = 471) showed that when lacking a serious relationship partner, the curve was stronger among men with lower and higher perceived spousal value.