Automatic Associations and Conscious Attitudes Predict Different Aspects of Men’s Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Harassment Proclivities

Abstract

Intimate partner violence against women (IPV) and sexual harassment are both widespread.Research on their causes and attitudinal correlates has rarely examined implicit, automatic cognitive associations related to the partner (in IPV aggressors) or to women (in sexual harassment offenders). The aim of the present research was to study these implicit associations in 129 male German students. Participants completed scales of hostile sexism (HS), masculine gender role stress (MGRS), short-term (STMO) and long-term mating orientation (LTMO), and proclivity to both IPV and sexual harassment. Next they performed a primed lexical decision task that measured whether concepts of violence, power, hostility, and sexuality were differentially associated with representations of women, men, and the participant's own intimate partner. Results showed that implicit associations of own partner with violence as well as hostility were generally high but did not correlate strongly with the proclivity measures. Furthermore, the proclivity measures were positively predicted by HS, MGRS, and STMO, whereas LTMO negatively predicted IPV proclivity. Practice implications point to the need to address early socialization processes that may shape men's negative associations with female partners. Some strategies to prevent and reduce these types of implicit associations are discussed.

A systematic review of the ambivalent sexism literature: Hostile sexism protects men’s power; benevolent sexism guards traditional gender roles.

“…Studies that have examined the proclivity toward domestic violence mostly used self-report questionnaires or scenarios to assess, within intimate relationships, the frequency of aggressive behavior (e.g., cyberbullying of girlfriends; Martinez-Pecino & Durán, 2019) or violence (e.g., Renzetti et al, 2018; Zapata-Calvente et al, 2019). HS in men is positively associated with greater perpetration of physical and psychological aggression and violence against women partners (e.g., Juarros-Basterretxea et al, 2019; Whitaker, 2013; Zapata-Calvente et al, 2019), and may also generalize to aggressive parenting (Overall et al, 2021). A cross-cultural study that used national statistics for assaults and homicides lends weight to this evidence by showing that national levels of HS (with values derived from Glick et al, 2004) were associated with women’s victimization rates (Archer, 2007).…”

“…Articles on domestic violence varied in terms of the stage of the intimate relationship that was examined, ranging from dating (e.g., Sánchez-Hernández et al, 2020) to committed relationships (e.g., Zapata-Calvente et al, 2019) and marriage (e.g., Overall et al, 2021). 9 Studies that have examined the proclivity toward domestic violence mostly used self-report questionnaires or scenarios to assess, within intimate relationships, the frequency of aggressive behavior (e.g., cyberbullying of girlfriends; Martinez-Pecino & Durán, 2019) or violence (e.g., Renzetti et al, 2018;Zapata-Calvente et al, 2019). HS in men is positively associated with greater perpetration of physical and psychological aggression and violence against women partners (e.g., Juarros-Basterretxea et al, 2019;Whitaker, 2013;Zapata-Calvente et al, 2019), and may also generalize to aggressive parenting (Overall et al, 2021).…”

Uncovering Sexual Harassment Issues in the Workplace: A Study on Hotels in Egypt

“…In the workplace, SH is still generally perceived as behavior directed at women by men (McCabe & Hardam 2005). SH can be verbal, nonverbal, or physical behaviors (Crowley et al, 2019) that are unwelcome and observed negatively by the target (Zapata-Calvente et al, 2019). SH behaviors are such as unwanted sexual comments or jokes; unwelcome touches in a sexual way; and undesirable sexual rumors being spread about someone; repeated requests for dates, whistles, staring, and various types https://jaauth.journals.ekb.eg / of unwelcome physical contact of a sexual nature (McCabe & Hardam 2005;Crowley et al, 2019).…”

“…The impacts of SH on women employees in the service sector generally and hotels specifically include increased absenteeism, poor customer service, and low profitability (Sims et al, 2005;Kensbock et al, 2015;Morgan & Pritchard 2019;Teo et al, 2020), poor working relationships, low morale (Mkono 2010), low self-esteem, insufficient organizational commitment (Long et al, 2016) negative corporate reputation from the public (Ali et al, 2015). Also, SH has an impact on mental, https://jaauth.journals.ekb.eg / psychological, and physical health as evidenced in their higher levels of symptoms such as loss of confidence, stress, anxiety, lack of security, bad dreams, and difficulty sleeping, a sense of fear, shame, confusion, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, headaches and gastric problem (Gilbert et al, 1998;Murdoch & McGovern 1998;Gettman et al, 2007;Willness et al, 2007;Ali et al, 2015;Sepulveda 2015;Long et al, 2016;Zapata-Calvente et al, 2019;Jung & Yoon 2019).…”

An Implicit Measure of Sexual Double Standard Endorsement in Emerging Adults: Reliability and Validity Aspects

“…Indirect measures of SDS endorsement such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald et al, 1998), tapping into automatic cognitions, may bear advantages over self-report measures (Zapata-Calvente et al, 2019). The IAT has, in its relatively brief history, become known as a psychometrically sound instrument (Cunningham et al, 2001) that is able to capture individuals' implicit associations between semantic categories (Greenwald et al, 1998).…”