Previous research has demonstrated that when a message is ambiguous, individuals make assumptions about the intent of the message being sent. Building on error management theory and heuristic decision making, we conducted three studies that manipulated the sex of the sender and receiver of messages in a specific scenario and asked observers to rate the sender’s sexism (Studies 1-3) and other elements of the situation (Studies 2-3). We also examined the degree to which various attitudes – concern for political correctness (Studies 1 and 2), social justice (Study 2), ambivalence toward men (Study 2), and neosexism (Study 3) – explained unique variance in respondent ratings. Across all three studies, we found that when the receiver was a woman, the sender (regardless of sex) was rated as significantly more sexist, but this effect was amplified when the sender was a man. In Studies 1 and 2, none of the attitude variables interacted in a consistent way with the sex of the interactants. In Study 3, however, results suggested that those low in neosexism showed more pronounced ratings of sexism in the male sender-female receiver condition. The results of the study have implications for future research in the areas of sexism, social prediction, and heuristic decision making.
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