Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Ambivalent Sexism in Close Relationships: (Hostile) Power and (Benevolent) Romance Shape Relationship Ideals

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Sex Roles Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Gender-based structural power and heterosexual dependency produce ambivalent gender ideologies, with hostility and benevolence separately shaping close-relationship ideals. The relative importance of romanticized benevolent versus more overtly power-based hostile sexism, however, may be culturally dependent. Testing this, northeast US (N = 311) and central Chinese (N = 290) undergraduates rated prescriptions and proscriptions (ideals) for partners and completed Ambivalent Sexism and Ambivalence toward Men Inventories (ideologies). Multiple regressions analyses conducted on group-specific relationship ideals revealed that benevolent ideologies predicted partner ideals, in both countries, especially for US culture’s romance-oriented relationships. Hostile attitudes predicted men’s ideals, both American and Chinese, suggesting both societies’ dominant-partner advantage.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abrams, D., Viki, G. T., Masser, B., & Bohner, G. (2003). Perceptions of stranger and acquaintance rape: The role of benevolent and hostile sexism in victim blame and rape proclivity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 111–125.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Barreto, M., & Ellemers, N. (2005). The burden of benevolent sexism: How it contributes to the maintenance of gender inequalities. European Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 633–642.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Begany, J. J., & Milburn, M. (2002). Psychological predictors of sexual harassment: Authoritarianism, hostile sexism, and rape myths. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 3, 119–126.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berscheid, E., & Meyers, S. A. (1996). A social categorical approach to a question about love. Personal Relationships, 3, 19–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brehm, S. S. (1992). Intimate relationships. New York: McGraw-Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burgess, D., & Borgida, E. (1999). Who women are, who women should be: Descriptive and prescriptive gender stereotyping in sex discrimination. Psychology, Public Policy, and the Law, 5, 665–692.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buss, D. M., & Shackelford, T. K. (2008). Attractive women want it all: Good genes, economic investment, parenting proclivities, and emotional commitment. Evolutionary Psychology, 6, 134–146.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chen, Z., Fiske, S. T., & Lee, T. L. (2009). Ambivalent sexism and power-related gender-role ideology in marriage. Sex Roles, 60, 765–778.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Christopher, A. N., & Mull, M. S. (2006). Conservative ideology and ambivalent sexism. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 30, 223–230.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dion, K. K., & Dion, K. L. (1993). Individualistic and collectivistic perspectives on gender and the cultural context of love and intimacy. Journal of Social Issues, 49, 53–69.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dion, K. K., & Dion, K. L. (1996). Cultural perspectives on romantic love. Personal Relationships, 3, 5–17.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eastwick, P. W., Eagly, A. H., Glick, P., Johannesen-Schmidt, M., Fiske, S. T., Blum, A., et al. (2006). Is traditional gender ideology associated with sex-typed mate preferences? A test in nine nations. Sex Roles, 54, 603–614.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feather, N. T. (2004). Value correlates of ambivalent attitudes toward gender relations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 3–12.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Glick, P., Diebold, J., Bailey-Werner, B., & Zhu, L. (1997). The two faces of Adam: Ambivalent sexism and polarized attitudes toward women. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 1323–1334.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (1996). The ambivalent sexism inventory: Differentiating hostile and benevolent sexism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 491–512.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (1997). Hostile and benevolent sexism: Measuring ambivalent sexist attitudes toward women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21, 119–135.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (1999). The ambivalence toward men inventory: Differentiating hostile and benevolent beliefs about men. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 23, 519–536.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (2001). Ambivalent sexism. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 33, pp. 115–188). Thousand Oaks: Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Glick, P., Fiske, S. T., Mladinic, A., Saiz, J. L., Abrams, D., Masser, B., et al. (2000). Beyond prejudice as simple antipathy: Hostile and benevolent sexism across cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 763–775.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Glick, P., Lameiras, M., Fiske, S. T., Eckes, T., Masser, B., Volpato, C., et al. (2004). Bad but bold: Ambivalent attitudes toward men predict gender inequality in 16 nations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86, 713–728.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Glick, P., Sakalli-Ugurlu, N., Ferreira, M. C., & de Souza, M. A. (2002). Ambivalent sexism and attitudes toward wife abuse in Turkey and Brazil. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 26, 292–297.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodenough, W. H. (1970). Describing a culture. Description and comparison in cultural anthropology (pp. 104–119). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodwin, S. A., Fiske, S. T., Rosen, L. D., & Rosenthal, A. M. (2002). The eye of the beholder: Romantic goals and impression biases. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 232–241.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hsu, F. L. K. (1981). Americans and Chinese: Passage to differences (3rd ed.). Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johannesen-Schmidt, M. C., & Eagly, A. H. (2002). Another look at sex differences in preferred mate characteristics: The effects of endorsing the traditional female gender role. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 26, 322–328.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jost, J. T., & Kay, A. C. (2005). Exposure to benevolent sexism and complementary gender stereotypes: Consequences for specific and diffuse forms of system justification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 498–509.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • King, M. P., (Writer) & Van Patten, T. (Director). (2004). An American girl in Paris (part deux). In J. Rottenberg & E. Zuritsky (Producers), Sex and the city. New York: HBO.

  • Kephart, W. M. (1967). Some correlates of romantic love. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 29, 470–474.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kurzban, R., & Weeden, J. (2005). Hurrydate: Mate preferences in action. Evolution and Human Behavior, 26, 227–244.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levine, R., Sato, S., Hashimoto, T., & Verma, J. (1995). Love and marriage in eleven cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 26, 554–571.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Masser, B. M., & Abrams, D. (1999). Contemporary sexism: The relationships among hostility, benevolence, and neosexism. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 23, 503–517.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Masser, B. M., & Abrams, D. (2004). Reinforcing the glass ceiling: The consequences of hostile sexism for female managerial candidates. Sex Roles, 51, 609–615.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pimentel, E. E. (2000). Just how do I love thee?: Marital relations in urban China. Journal of Marriage and Family, 62, 32–47.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prentice, D. A., & Carranza, E. (2002). What women and men should be, shouldn’t be, are allowed to be, and don’t have to be: The contents of prescriptive gender stereotypes. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 26, 269–281.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Riley, N. E. (1994). Interwoven lives: Parents, marriage, and Guanxi in China. Journal of Marriage and Family, 56, 791–803.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rudman, L. A., & Glick, P. (2001). Prescriptive gender stereotypes and backlash toward agentic women. Journal of Social Issues, 57, 743–762.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rudman, L. A., & Heppen, J. B. (2003). Implicit romantic fantasies and women’s interest in personal power: A glass slipper effect? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 1357–1370.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sakalli-Ugurlu, N., & Glick, P. (2003). Ambivalent sexism and attitudes toward women who engage in premarital sex in Turkey. The Journal of Sex Research, 40, 296–302.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology Vol. 25 (pp. 1–65). Orlando: Academic.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Sibley, C. G., & Wilson, M. S. (2004). Differentiating hostile and benevolent sexist attitudes toward positive and negative sexual female subtypes. Sex Roles, 51, 687–696.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simpson, J., Campbell, B., & Berscheid, E. (1986). The association between romantic love and marriage: Kephart (1967) twice revisited. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 12, 363–372.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sprecher, S., Aron, A., Hatfield, E., Cortese, A., Potapova, E., & Levitskaya, A. (1994). Love: American style, Russian style, and Japanese style. Personal Relationships, 1, 349–369.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stafford, L., & Canary, D. J. (1991). Maintenance strategies and romantic relationship type, gender and relational characteristics. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 8, 217–242.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tiedens, L. Z. (2001). Anger and advancement versus sadness and subjugation: The effect of negative emotion expressions on social status conferral. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 86–94.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • United Nations Development Programme. (2005). Human development report 2005. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Viki, G. T., & Abrams, D. (2002). But she was unfaithful: Benevolent sexism and reactions to rape victims who violate traditional gender role expectations. Sex Roles, 47, 289–293.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Viki, G. T., Abrams, D., & Hutchison, P. (2003). The “true” romantic: Benevolent sexism and paternalistic chivalry. Sex Roles, 49, 533–537.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, C. D., & Mallinckrodt, B. S. (2006). Differences between Taiwanese and U.S. cultural beliefs about ideal adult attachment. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 53, 192–204.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank Andrew Conway for his helpful advice on statistical analyses and Blair Moorhead for her help in coding data. We are also grateful to James Chu of Princeton University’s Office of Information Technology for his assistance in collecting open-ended data. This research was supported partially by a grant from Chinese National Social Science Foundation (09BSH045) and Culture and Social Science Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (08JA630027) for the fourth author.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Tiane L. Lee & Susan T. Fiske

  2. Lawrence University, Appleton, WI, USA

    Peter Glick

  3. Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China

    Zhixia Chen

Authors
  1. Tiane L. Lee
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Susan T. Fiske
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Peter Glick
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Zhixia Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Tiane L. Lee or Susan T. Fiske.

Appendix

Appendix

Appendix A

Ambivalent Sexism Inventory

Chinese version:

  1. 1.

    很多女人拥有男人缺乏的纯洁品质。(B)

  2. 2.

    女人应该受到男人的宠爱和保护。(B)

  3. 3.

    女人试图通过控制男人来获得权力。(H)

  4. 4.

    每个男人都应该有一个他爱慕的女人。(B)

  5. 5.

    没有女人的男人不完整。(B)

  6. 6.

    女人往往夸大她们在工作中的问题。(H)

  7. 7.

    女人一旦得到男人对她的承诺, 就希望把他成天圈住。(H)

  8. 8.

    当女人在与男人的公平竞争中失利时, 她们总抱怨自己受到了性别歧视。(H)

  9. 9.

    许多女人喜欢戏弄男人, 她们让男人觉得似乎可以得到她, 然后又拒绝他。(H)

  10. 10.

    女人比男人往往有更高的道德感。(B)

  11. 11.

    男人应该甘愿牺牲自己为女人提供经济保证。(B)

  12. 12.

    女权主义者正向男人提出无理要求。(H)

English version:

  1. 1.

    Many women have a quality of purity that few men possess. (B)

  2. 2.

    Women should be cherished and protected by men. (B)

  3. 3.

    Women seek to gain power by getting control over men. (H)

  4. 4.

    Every man ought to have a woman whom he adores. (B)

  5. 5.

    Men are incomplete without women. (B)

  6. 6.

    Women exaggerate problems they have at work. (H)

  7. 7.

    Once a woman gets a man to commit to her, she usually tries to put him on a tight leash. (H)

  8. 8.

    When women lose to men in a fair competition, they typically complain about being discriminated against. (H)

  9. 9.

    Many women get a kick out of teasing men by seeming sexually available and then refusing male advances. (H)

  10. 10.

    Women, compared to men, tend to have a superior moral sensibility. (B)

  11. 11.

    Men should be willing to sacrifice their own well being in order to provide financially for the women in their lives. (B)

  12. 12.

    Feminists are making unreasonable demands of men. (H)

Note. All items used a 6-point scale (0 = Disagree strongly; 5 = Agree strongly). Items denoted with (B) express benevolent attitudes; items denoted with (H) express hostile attitudes.

Appendix B

Ambivalence toward Men Inventory

Chinese version:

  1. 1.

    即便夫妇双方都有工作, 在家里妻子也应多照顾丈夫。(H)

  2. 2.

    男人“帮助”女人往往是为了显示他们比女人强。(H)

  3. 3.

    每个女人都需要一个珍爱自己的男人。(B)

  4. 4.

    如果没有一段忠诚、长期的爱情, 女人的一生就不完整。(B)

  5. 5.

    男人生病时简直像个孩子。(H)

  6. 6.

    男人总是争取比女人在社会上拥有更多权力。(H)

  7. 7.

    男人可以为女人提供经济保障。(B)

  8. 8.

    即便是那些声称自己尊重女性权利的男人, 他们其实也想要一个妻子在家里履行绝大部分家务、照顾孩子的传统夫妻关系。(H)

  9. 9.

    男人更愿意冒着危险去帮助他人。(B)

  10. 10.

    一旦失去身份地位, 很多男人真像孩子。(H)

  11. 11.

    男人比女人更喜欢冒险。(B)

  12. 12.

    一旦拥有权力和机会, 很多男人都会对女人进行性骚扰, 即使仅仅是微妙的骚扰。(H)

English version:

  1. 1.

    Even if both members of a couple work, the woman ought to be more attentive to taking care of her man at home. (B)

  2. 2.

    When men act to “help” women, they are often trying to prove they are better than women. (H)

  3. 3.

    Every woman needs a male partner who will cherish her. (B)

  4. 4.

    A woman will never be truly fulfilled in life if she doesn’t have a committed, long-term relationship with a man. (B)

  5. 5.

    Men act like babies when they are sick. (H)

  6. 6.

    Men will always fight to have greater control in society than women. (H)

  7. 7.

    Men are mainly useful to provide financial security for women. (B)

  8. 8.

    Even men who claim to be sensitive to women’s rights really want a traditional relationship at home, with the woman performing most of the housekeeping and child care. (H)

  9. 9.

    Men are more willing to put themselves in danger to protect others. (B)

  10. 10.

    When it comes down to it, most men are really like children. (H)

  11. 11.

    Men are more willing to take risks than women. (B)

  12. 12.

    Most men sexually harass women, even if only in subtle ways, once they are in a position of power over them. (H)

Note. All items used a 6-point scale (0 = Disagree strongly; 5 = Agree strongly). Items denoted with (B) express benevolent attitudes; items denoted with (H) express hostile attitudes.

Appendix C

American Men’s Prescriptive Ideals

Table 6
Full size table

Appendix D

American Men’s Proscriptive Ideals

Table 7
Full size table

Appendix E

American Women’s Prescriptive Ideals

Table 8
Full size table

Appendix F

American Women’s Proscriptive Ideals

Table 9
Full size table

Appendix G

Chinese Men’s Prescriptive Ideals

Table 10
Full size table

Appendix H

Chinese Men’s Proscriptive Ideals

Table 11
Full size table

Appendix I

Chinese Women’s Prescriptive Ideals

Table 12
Full size table

Appendix J

Chinese Women’s Proscriptive Ideals

Table 13
Full size table

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Lee, T.L., Fiske, S.T., Glick, P. et al. Ambivalent Sexism in Close Relationships: (Hostile) Power and (Benevolent) Romance Shape Relationship Ideals. Sex Roles 62, 583–601 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-010-9770-x

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-010-9770-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation