The authors argue that complementary hostile and benevolent components of sexism exist across cultures. Male dominance creates hostile sexism (HS), but men's dependence on women fosters benevolent sexism (BS)--subjectively positive attitudes that put women on a pedestal but reinforce their subordination. Research with 15,000 men and women in 19 nations showed that (a) HS and BS are coherent constructs that correlate positively across nations, but (b) HS predicts the ascription of negative and BS the ascription of positive traits to women, (c) relative to men, women are more likely to reject HS than BS, especially when overall levels of sexism in a culture are high, and (d) national averages on BS and HS predict gender inequality across nations. These results challenge prevailing notions of prejudice as an antipathy in that BS (an affectionate, patronizing ideology) reflects inequality and is a cross-culturally pervasive complement to HS.
Income inequality undermines societies: the more inequality, the more health problems, social tensions, and the lower social mobility, trust, life expectancy. Given people’s tendency to legitimate existing social arrangements, the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) argues that ambivalence—perceiving many groups as either warm or competent, but not both—may help maintain socio-economic disparities. The association between stereotype ambivalence and income inequality in 37 cross-national samples from Europe, the Americas, Oceania, Asia, and Africa investigates how groups’ overall warmth-competence, status-competence, and competition-warmth correlations vary across societies, and whether these variations associate with income inequality (Gini index). More unequal societies report more ambivalent stereotypes, while more equal ones dislike competitive groups and do not necessarily respect them as competent. Unequal societies may need ambivalence for system stability: income inequality compensates groups with partially positive social images.
The fears of childhood and adolescence may differ from one cultural context to another. We explored this possibility in 1200 American, Australian, Chinese, and Nigerian children and adolescents between 7 and 17 years of age. Responses to a standard fear survey schedule revealed significant differences in the number, content, pattern, and level of fears. Nigerian children and adolescents endorsed fears at higher levels than American, Australian, or Chinese youth who did not differ from one another. However, differences in the pattern and content of fears for boys and girls of different ages were noted across the countries. Results were interpreted within a cultural context, which suggested that cultures which favor inhibition, compliance, and obedience serve to increase levels of fear. Alternative interpretations are offered and limitations of cross-cultural research are explored.
Demonstrating the equivalence of constructs is a key requirement for crosscultural\ud
empirical research. The major purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how to\ud
assess measurement and functional equivalence or invariance using the 9-item, 3-factor\ud
Love of Money Scale (LOMS, a second-order factor model) and the 4-item, 1-factor Pay\ud
Level Satisfaction Scale (PLSS, a first-order factor model) across 29 samples in six\ud
continents (N = 5973). In step 1, we tested the configural, metric and scalar invariance\ud
of the LOMS and 17 samples achieved measurement invariance. In step 2, we applied\ud
the same procedures to the PLSS and nine samples achieved measurement invariance.\ud
Five samples (Brazil, China, South Africa, Spain and the USA) passed the measurement\ud
invariance criteria for both measures. In step 3, we found that for these two measures,\ud
common method variance was non-significant. In step 4, we tested the functional\ud
equivalence between the Love of Money Scale and Pay Level Satisfaction Scale. We\ud
achieved functional equivalence for these two scales in all five samples. The results of\ud
this study suggest the critical importance of evaluating and establishing measurement\ud
equivalence in cross-cultural studies. Suggestions for remedying measurement nonequivalence\ud
are offered
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