Month/Year of Graduation

12-2020

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science (B.S.)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Dr. Carey S. Ryan

Abstract

Research indicates that sexism allows women to justify men’s privileged status; indeed, sexism has predicted women’s conservative vote choice (Cassese & Barnes, 2018). Benevolent attitudes toward men (BM) are based in beliefs about women and men’s interdependence (Glick & Fiske, 1999). Married women may experience greater interdependence and may desire to preserve beneficial structural power systems. The present research examined the relationship of BM to political conservatism among married and never-married women. Married and never-married women recruited from Prolific Academic completed a measure of political conservatism and the 10-item BM scale (Glick & Fiske, 1999). The results indicated that, as expected, married women were more conservative than were never-married women and expressed stronger BM. Further, married (vs. never-married) women and women who had more (vs. less) BM exhibited greater conservativism. Finally, the association between BM and greater conservatism was stronger for married than for never-married women. These conclusions remained when age and race were controlled. The political role of gendered attitudes typically focuses on perceptions of women, but attitudes toward men appear to separately influence political views.

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