Perils and Promise of Studying Sexist Discrimination in Face-to-Face Situations (From Sexual Harassment on College Campuses: Abusing the Ivory Power, Second Edition, P 57-71, 1996, Michele A Paludi, ed. -- See NCJ-164274)

• NCJ Number: 164279
• Author(s): B Lott
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 15 pages
• Sale Source: State University of New York Press
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: SUNY Series, The Psychology of Women

Annotation

This paper describes a research program that systematically investigated sexist discrimination in face-to-face situations; the focus was on interpersonal discrimination versus institutional discrimination, with the former operationalized as distancing behavior.

Abstract

The central research question was what men did in the presence of women, not what they said they felt or believed about women. The following components of sexism were evaluated: negative attitudes toward women; beliefs about women that reinforced, complemented, or justified prejudice and that involved an assumption of inferiority; and overt behaviors that achieved separation from women through exclusion, avoidance, or distancing. In the first study, male and female behavior toward same gender and other gender partners with whom they had no prior acquaintance was compared in dyads brought to a laboratory to participate in a domino contest. In the second study, the behavior of men and women toward same gender and other gender persons was observed on television, as performed by characters in episodes of weekly dramatic or comedy shows. Both studies tested and found support for the general hypothesis that men tended to separate or distance themselves more from women than from men, while women did not behave differently on this dimension toward same gender and other gender persons. Practical implications of the findings for programs to reduce sexism are discussed. 31 references