The Effect Of Behavioral Immune System On Misogyny

In recent years,misogyny has been a hot topic in the public eye.Both anonymous malicious comments by male netizens online and violent incidents against women in real life have aroused wide public attention and heated discussion,further exacerbating gender antagonism.More importantly,violence against women has increased dramatically worldwide during the current global epidemic of novel coronavirus pneumonia,suggesting that there may be a correlation between the epidemic environment and men’s misogynistic tendencies.Therefore,the current research aimed to carry out serial studies to explore the influence of disease threat on men’s misogyny and the psychological mechanism behind this connection within the framework of the behavioral immune system theory.The current research conducted 8 studies,including 4 questionnaire surveys and 4experiments,in order to explore the relationship between the behavioral immune system and hegemonic masculinity as well as misogyny with several samples of adult males.The first part consists of three studies,focusing on the relationship between individual differences in the behavioral immune system(i.e.,perceived vulnerability to disease,perceived infectability,germ aversion,and disgust sensitivity)and the endorsement of hegemonic masculine norms(i.e.,power over women,winning,heterosexual self-presentation),and the mediating mechanism of social conservatism(i.e.,social dominance orientation,vertical collectivism,and conservatism)among males.Study 1 investigate whether the BIS strengths were positive associated with hegemonic masculinity with the mediator of social dominance orientation,which was one of the most commonly used indicators of social conservatism.Study 2 examined the mediation mechanism between the BIS and hegemonic masculinity with another social conservatism indicator,vertical collectivism.Given that study 1 and 2 used indirect measurement of social conservatism,study 3 examined the mediation mechanism between the BIS and hegemonic masculinity with the direct measurement of conservatism.Results of the studies of 1,2 and 3 indicated that the chronic traits in behavioral immune system might positively correlated with men’s endorsement of hegemonic masculinity(especially the norm of power over women)directly or indirectly via the mediation of social conservatism.The second part includes five studies,extending the investigation to the influence of the BIS on misogyny among males.Study 4 investigated whether the BIS strengths were positive associated with hostile sexism with the mediation of the adoption of hegemonic masculine norms among males.Results showed that the BIS strengths were associated with more endorsement of hegemonic masculine norms,which was in turn correlated with stronger hostile sexism.Study 5 conducted an experiment to examine the impact of disease threat on men’s prejudice based hostile attitude toward women in general,with the priming manipulation of images with infectious cues.The results indicated that that the interactions between PVD-GA and experimental condition took a significant positive effect on men’s hostile sexism.Specifically,when primed with pathogen cues,male participants with higher level of germ aversion tendency showed greater hostile sexism toward women.Study 6 moved forward to separate two prominently opposite types of women,and investigated whether pathogen threat would increase men’s negative perception of “bad women” compared with “good women”.Results showed that the disease threat decreased men’s perceived likability and warmth toward “bad women” but not “good women”.That is,when primed with disease threat,men showed more negative attitudes toward women who challenge male dominance.Thus,the disease threat might increase misogynistic attitudes among males.On the basis of study 6,study 7 and 8 applied a different experimental manipulation to further test whether the disease threat would increase men’s sexual aggressions and violence acceptance toward “bad women”.Results showed that disease threat increased men’s rape myth acceptance and violence acceptance toward “bad women”.Thus,the research provided further evidence that the disease threat might encourage more misogyny in terms of aggression acceptance.To conclude,the behavioral immune system is positively associated with men’s endorsement of hegemonic masculine norms(especially power over women norm)through the mediation of social conservatism.Furthermore,the BIS may predict more misogyny among men.The findings of current research extended previous research of the behavioral immune system and its influence on individuals’ attitudes with a feminist perspective,which could offer deeper understanding of the misogyny in current society with epidemics and provide some enlightenments for strategies protecting women from violence.