Taking sides: Gender and third‐party partisanship in disputes

Abstract

We examine the role of a norm protecting women in understanding third‐party partisanship in verbal and violent disputes. Our analyses are based on reports provided by male inmates and men they know who have never been arrested. The results show that third parties are more likely to support female adversaries than male adversaries. The gender effect is stronger when we control for the relational distance between adversaries, which indicates that a privacy norm might inhibit this normative protection. The gender effect is somewhat weaker when we control for the relative physical size of the adversaries, which indicates that a general norm protecting vulnerable people partly explains the gender effect. The strong gender effect that remains, however, demonstrates the importance of the normative protection of women, regardless of relative size, during disputes. The results have implications for research on situational factors in violence and violence against women.

Push and pushback: Control behavior as a precipitant of verbal and violent disputes

“…The data for the current study were obtained from a sample of male inmates and men that they knew from the community who had never been arrested (see, Berg & Felson, 2020;Felson et al, 2018;Rogers et al, 2019). Before taking the survey, respondents were informed about consent, anonymity, confidentiality, and the study's approval by the institutional review board.…”

A CCTV-based analysis of target selection by guardians intervening in interpersonal conflicts

“…Although there thus appears to be a gender bias in the target selection of guardians, the effect of gender in the model might in fact be a question of physical strength and therefore potential danger. However, a recent study finds that, even when controlling for physical size, the gender of the antagonists still influences the side-taking of guardians (Rogers et al, 2019).…”

“…Previous research indicates that the gender composition of the antagonists might influence whom guardians target when they intervene in an interpersonal conflict. There is general consensus in the scientific literature that aggressive behaviour from a man towards a woman is judged more harshly than the aggressive behaviour from a woman towards a man (Allen and Bradley, 2018; Harris, 1991; Rogers et al, 2019; Sorenson and Taylor, 2005). This pattern has been explained with the chivalry norm , which prescribes that men should not act aggressively towards women.…”

When Is Retaliation Respected? Status and Vengefulness in Intergroup and Interpersonal Contexts

“…We expect that these kinds of situations are more familiar to individuals and provoke milder emotional responses, generating fewer barriers to accurate self-reports. Additionally, vignettes track closely with behavioral or observational research on aggressive behavior in a number of cases, such as in third-party intervention between male and female disputants (Rogers et al 2019) and the deterrent effect of coercive capacity (Archer and Benson 2008; Benard, Berg, and Mize 2017).…”