Chivalry: The relation between a cultural script and stereotypes about women

Chivalry is a cultural script prescribing the preferential treatment of women by men in the contexts of protection and provision. Although it is often regarded as a polite and prosocial script for male-female relations, chivalry is sometimes suspected of undermining efforts to promote equal status for women because it suggests that women require more help than men do. In this report, I examined the relation between chivalry and two beliefs about women: the belief that women are more virtuous than men and the belief that women are less agentic than men. Endorsement of the chivalry script was found to be significantly positively correlated with the belief that women are more virtuous than men and the belief that women are less agentic than men. In addition, chivalrous men tended to show preferential treatment only to women who appeared to be high in virtue and low in agency. Finally, participants who merely observed a woman receiving chivalrous treatment perceived her to be significantly less independent than participants who observed the same woman when she did not receive chivalrous treatment.