Since women have traditionally been valued as moral exemplars and innocent creatures that should be protected by men, disagreement with this notion could be interpreted differently depending on the target’s gender. For example, if a woman disagrees with benevolent sexist ideas, then people may think that she views women and men on equal terms, as they may think it unlikely that she has negative feelings about her own gender. However, if a man disagrees with benevolent sexist ideas, then people may misattribute his beliefs to misogyny, since he is not valuing women in the traditional manner that people have been taught to. Based on this line of reasoning, I predicted that both male and female perceivers will assume that men, but not women, have univalent attitudes toward women. If people do assume univalent attitudes in men, then the male target’s level of BS will influence his perceived level of HS, such that low (high) BS men will be rated as more (less) hostile towards women. A female target’s level of BS, however, will have less impact on perceptions of her levels of hostility toward women.

This thesis reports two studies that examine lay people’s perception of the relationship between men’s HS and BS. Similar to previous work (Bohner et al., 2010; Kilianski & Rudman, 1998), participants were presented with target profiles and completed dependent measures about the target. In Study 1, I tested if laypeople misperceive the relationship between men’s HS and BS attitudes by manipulating target information on one component of sexism and directly measuring the target’s predicted score on the other component of sexism. In Study 2, I tested the role of attributional ambiguity in laypeople’s misconceptions of BS in men by manipulating the attribution for the target’s rejection of BS and directly measuring the target’s predicted level of HS.

In both studies, I also measured participants’ inferences about the target’s attitudes and behaviours (e.g., support for female professionals, quality as a spouse and parent, and propensity for abusiveness). If people indeed have misconceptions about the relationship between men’s HS and BS, then they would make more negative inferences about the low BS male target than the high BS male target. Thus, in Study 1, I expected that the low BS male target would be rated as more hostile towards women than the low BS female target and the high BS male target, but level of BS would have less impact on evaluations of the female target. In Study 2, I expected that the low BS male target who endorses egalitarian beliefs would be rated as less hostile toward women than the low BS male target who did not explicitly endorse egalitarian beliefs, but ratings of the low BS female target would be less affected by endorsement of egalitarianism.