Ambivalent attitudes toward women and men. Recognizability of stereotypes and effects on self-perception

The research had two aims: exploring the possibility of recognizing both hostile and benevolent attitudes toward women and men as prejudiced, and identifying the effects of these attitudes on self-perception. Two studies were conducted to analyze how people perceive and react when exposed to stereotypes about women and men. In Study 1, 244 adults (49.6% male; average age 42.82 years) read the results of a pretended research concerning opinions about women in Italian society. Half of them read opinions based on an explicitly hostile sexist view; the others opinions based on a benevolent attitude toward women. We assessed participants’ evaluation of the source, perceived sexism, emotional reactions and self-perception. Study 2 (N = 242; 50% male; average age 40.33 years) replicated Study 1 just considering descriptions based on hostile and benevolent attitudes toward men. On the whole, our results showed that benevolent attitudes toward women are not recognized as sexist, whilst men seem more sensitive in recognizing stereotypes about their ingroup. Concerning self-perception, data confirmed the tendency of women and men to respectively describe themselves in communal and agentic terms, except when men are exposed to hostile attitudes toward their ingroup: in this case, they seem to react using more communal terms for self-description.