Gender rules, that is, prescriptive and proscriptive gender stereotypes, dictate how women and men should and should not be, and thereby perpetuate the gender hierarchy that privileges men over women. Across seven nations that span the continuum of gender equality, we investigated gender status norms by identifying the extent to which gender rules correspond with social status beliefs. As expected, in all investigated nations, participants ( N = 4,327) believed that men should not show low-status traits reflecting weakness (e.g., weak, naive) but should show high-status traits reflecting agency (e.g., leadership ability, ambitious). Correlational analyses found that the more gender-equal a nation, the more men's agency prescriptions were aligned with high-status and their weakness proscriptions with low-status characteristics. Moreover, participants believed that women should not show high-status traits reflecting dominance (e.g., dominant, demanding) in the United States, Turkey, India, and Ghana—that is, in the relatively less gender-equal nations. Yet, no trait was proscribed for women in the relatively more gender-equal nations of Switzerland and Sweden. The status alignment of women's prescriptions and proscriptions did not relate to nations’ achieved gender equality. We discuss how the alignment of men's gender rules with status beliefs represents a hidden barrier to achieving full gender equality.

This meta-analysis evaluated theoretical predictions from balanced identity theory (BIT) and evaluated the validity of zero points of Implicit Association Test (IAT) and self-report measures used to test these predictions. Twenty-one researchers contributed individual subject data from 36 experiments (total N = 12,773) that used both explicit and implicit measures of the social-cognitive constructs. The meta-analysis confirmed predictions of BIT's balance-congruity principle and simultaneously validated interpretation of the IAT's zero point as indicating absence of preference between two attitude objects. Statistical power afforded by the sample size enabled the first confirmations of balance-congruity predictions with self-report measures. Beyond these empirical results, the meta-analysis introduced a within-study statistical test of the balance-congruity principle, finding that it had greater efficiency than the previous best method. The meta-analysis's full data set has been publicly archived to enable further studies of interrelations among attitudes, stereotypes, and identities.

Three studies supported a model whereby associations between ideologies that share roots in biological determinism and outcomes that reinforce inequality (based on gender, race, or class) were mediated by system justification beliefs (SJB). Outcomes included support for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton as president (Study 1), justifying police brutality (Study 2), and support for a White House budget that slashed the social safety net to endow the wealthy with tax cuts (Study 3). These findings provoke a vital question: How do people deem unequal systems worthy of defense? Each study compared social Darwinism, social dominance orientation (SDO), and biological essentialism. We expected social Darwinism to account for the most variance in SJB because it provides both the rationale for social hierarchies (natural selection) and defends them as required for human welfare. This prediction was supported in each study. Implications for the psychology of legitimacy are discussed.

OF THE THESIS Perceptions of Immigrant Threats: The Role of Social Darwinism by LINA SAUD Thesis Director: Laurie Rudman Despite being a nation of immigrants, the United States has seen spikes in anti-immigrant sentiment throughout its history (Higham, 2002), including today. Two perceived threats are implicated with driving these negative sentiments: (1) resource threats, reflecting economic competition with immigrants, and (2) symbolic threats, reflecting a cultural mismatch with immigrants, whose values undermine the host culture. Do resource threat and symbolic threat share a common ideology, or are they distinct? The current research aimed to answer this question. This study examined the predictive utility of two previously theorized ideological motivations, social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), as well as a prevalent yet overlooked ideology, social Darwinism (i.e. “survival of the fittest”), as the underlying motivations for both resource and symbolic threat concerns pertaining to immigration. Findings from this study reveal that these three ideologies perform similarly well in predicting both resource and symbolic threat perceptions, challenging the idea that SDO solely drives resource threat perceptions and RWA solely drives symbolic threat perceptions. Moreover, these findings reveal the need to include social Darwinism among the arsenal of belief systems driving anti-immigrant attitudes.

For the sake of gender equality, it is vital to determine why husbands who relieve their wives’ domestic burden are stigmatized as “unmanly” (Brescoll and Uhlmann in Psychol Women Q 29(4):436–445, 2005 ; Rudman and Mescher in J Soc Issues 69(2):322–340, 2013 ). We used biographical vignettes to examine whether masculinity penalties stem from not earning income (a male prescription) or performing domestic labor (“acting like women”). In Experiment 1, we held husbands’ domestic labor constant but manipulated how much income they earned from home; in Experiment 2, we held husbands’ earnings constant but varied their domestic labor. In Experiment 1, only low-income husbands were stigmatized (e.g., viewed as weaker than comparable wives); successful husbands working from home were spared penalties. In Experiment 2, husbands who performed 50 or 30% of the domestic labor were viewed similarly and more favorably than husbands who did 70%. Thus, across two experiments, men can relieve women’s domestic burden without penalty provided they also earn some income and do not shoulder domestic inequality themselves. These findings are optimistic for domestic and gender equality.

Previous research shows that gender vanguards (individuals who demonstrate gender-atypical skills and behavior) suffer backlash in the form of social and economic penalties (Rudman & Phelan, 2008). This study examined backlash against female and male job applicants who were either gender-atypical or typical. Professionals (N = 149) evaluated female or male managerial applicants for internal promotion described in their performance review as showing either self-advocacy or advocacy on behalf of their team. Atypical, other-advocating men were judged to be low on agency and competence and penalized with job dismissal. Serial mediation analysis demonstrated that, compared with other-advocating women, other-advocating men were perceived to lack agency, which contributed to a perceived loss of competence that ultimately led to greater penalties. The implications of these findings for contemporary leadership theories and men's and women's professional success in the workplace are discussed.

The authors of sexual economics theory (Baumeister & Twenge, 2002; Baumeister & Vohs, 2004) argue that sex is a female commodity that women exchange for men's resources; therefore, women (not men) are responsible for the cultural suppression of sexuality, ostensibly to preserve the value of sex. In this article, I describe the central tenets of sexual economics theory and summarize a growing body of research contradicting them. I also explain the negative implications of the claims of sexual economics theory for gender equality and heterosexual relationships. Researchers, clinicians, and educators engaged in understanding human sexuality may use the arguments provided in this article to counteract gender myths. This article also serves as a case study of how feminist scholars can employ empirical evidence to weaken a popularized, patriarchal theory.

Sociocultural and biological frameworks suggest a Sexual Advice Double Standard (SADS; wherein heterosexual men are encouraged to have causal sex more than heterosexual women are) motivated by intransigent factors (e.g., patriarchy or evolved dispositions). Alternatively, people generally perceive casual sex as riskier for women, who may be discouraged from sex to protect them from stigma and danger (Rudman et al. 2013 ). If so, manipulating perceived risk to reduce or reverse the costs of casual sex for men and for women should eliminate or reverse the SADS, respectively. Results investigating American adults ( N = 180) supported risk assessment’s explanatory power. When costs to both partners were mild, the SADS was eliminated, but when costs to men were higher, women were urged to have casual sex more than men were. The SADS emerged only when costs to women were higher. The findings have implications for gender equality and sexuality theories, but also practitioners (e.g., therapists, sex educators, and physicians). The SADS is far from intractable, but believing in rigid sexual double standards creates psychological conflict in women caught between motives to be seen as moral and sexually desirable, which negatively impacts their sexual health (e.g., Katz and Farrow 2000 ).

Proponents of sexual economics theory argue that women exchange sex for men's resources. This idea is likely to promote a competitive view of gender relationships that undermines gender equality by characterizing women as manipulative and financially dependent on men. Heterosexual college students (N = 474) who were randomly exposed to a popular YouTube video describing sexual economics theory increased their (1) behavioral support for sexual exchange concepts, (2) endorsement of the theory, and (3) adversarial views of heterosexual relationships, compared with a control group of students. Sexual exchange theory endorsement and adversarial heterosexual beliefs positively covaried, and both attitudes were related to participants' sexism. Reading a critique of sexual exchange theory, that emphasized mutual respect and affection as precursors to heterosexual intimacy, counteracted the consequences of exposure to the theory. The findings provide evidence that disseminating sexual exchange theory via video on the Internet negatively affects young adults' views of gender relationships. Educators, and others who wish to explore sexual economics theory through the use of this video, should also include a discussion of the countervailing evidence available. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/pwq/suppl/index .

Minority groups who show implicit outgroup preference (African Americans, the elderly, and the overweight) are also likely to suffer from appearance stigma (for deviating from cultural aesthetic norms; Goffman, 1963). Three studies showed that people who automatically preferred Whites using the attitude Implicit Association Test (IAT) also associated Whites more than Blacks with attractiveness using the aesthetic IAT. In Study 1, the aesthetic IAT covaried with Black American’s preference for Black women with chemically treated versus natural hair, and rating products that purchase “racial capital” (e.g., skin whiteners) as important and useful. In Study 2, Black American’s pro-White bias was only eliminated when the attitude IAT represented their group as more attractive than Whites (i.e., when appearance stigma was reversed). Further, the aesthetic IAT predicted the attitude IAT more uniquely than outgroup contact. In concert, the findings suggest that appearance stigma is an overlooked factor influencing racial asymmetries in automatic ingroup esteem.