Reactions to Male-favoring Vs. Female-favoring Sex Differences: The average man & average woman reacted more positively to the female-favoring sex differences

Stewart-Williams, Steve, Dr, Andrew G. Thomas, Jesse D. Blackburn, and Chern Y. M. Chan. 2019. “Reactions to Male-favoring Vs. Female-favoring Sex Differences: A Preregistered Experiment.” PsyArXiv. July 29. doi:10.31234/osf.io/nhvsr

Abstract: The primary aim of this study was to investigate how people react to research describing a sex difference, depending on whether the difference in question favors males or favors females. An additional aim was to see how accurately people can predict how the average man and the average woman will respond to such research. Western participants (N = 492) were presented with a fictional popular-science article describing either a male-favoring or a female-favoring sex difference (i.e., men/women are better at drawing; women/men lie more). Both sexes reacted less positively to the male-favoring differences, judging the findings less important, less plausible, more surprising, more offensive, more harmful, and more upsetting, as well as judging the research less well-conducted and studies of that type more inherently sexist. This reaction was driven in part by a belief in male privilege: The more strongly participants believed that men are privileged over women, the less positively they reacted to the male-favoring sex difference and the more positively they reacted to the female-favoring one (and vice versa for the minority of participants who believed that women are privileged over men). Participants predicted that the average man and the average woman would react more positively to sex differences favoring their own sex. This was true of the average woman, although the degree of own-sex favoritism was notably smaller than participants predicted. It was not true, however, of the average man who – like the average woman – reacted more positively to the female-favoring sex differences.