Women collectively condemn other women who appear to be sexually permissive; they believed that “provocatively” dressed women are more likely to have one-night stands, even when these women were not direct sexual rivals

Coordinated condemnation in women's intrasexual competition. Jessica D. Ayers, Aaron T. Goetz. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 185, February 2022, 111294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.111294

Highlights

• Potentially sexually permissive women are negatively judged across traits (Study 1).

• Negative mating judgments “leak” into non-mating-related judgments (Study 1)

• Controlling for mating judgments reduces negative non-mating judgments (Study 1).

• Women mentally represent other women's judgments of permissive rivals (Study 2).

Abstract: Here, we identify a novel reason why women are often criticized and condemned for (allegedly) sexually permissive behavior due to their choice of clothing. Combining principles from coordinated condemnation and sexual economics theory, we developed a model of competition that helps explain this behavior. We hypothesized that women collectively condemn other women who appear to be sexually permissive (based on their choice of clothing). Study 1 (N = 712) demonstrated that women perceived a rival with visible cleavage more negatively. These perceptions were ultimately driven by the belief that “provocatively” dressed women are more likely to have one-night stands. Study 2 (N = 341) demonstrated that women criticized provocatively dressed women, even when these women were not direct sexual rivals (e.g., her boyfriend's sister). Our findings suggest that future research should investigate competition outside of mating-relevant domains to understand women's intrasexual competition fully.

Keywords: Intrasexual competitionCoordinated condemnationCompetitor derogationPromiscuity

7. General discussion

These studies aimed to investigate coordinated condemnation in women's competition. In Study 1, we hypothesized that participants shown a target with visible cleavage would perceive the target more negatively even in domains unrelated to physical attractiveness and mating. In Study 2, we hypothesized that women would rate potentially sexually permissiveness targets more negatively regardless of if she was a direct sexual rival. We also asked participants to report how they believed other women and men would perceive the target.

Study 1 documented that women who saw the target with cleavage perceived her more negatively than participants who saw the target with a superimposed modesty panel. Further, after controlling for perceptions of the target's likelihood of having one-night stands, the other associations were no longer significant. This suggests that the negative perceptions of the target with visible cleavage were driven by perceptions that she would lower the collective “cost” of sexual access by acting sexually permissive.

In Study 2, we found that women reported more favorable perceptions of potentially permissive targets than they believed other women and men would regardless of if the target was a direct threat to their romantic relationships. Additionally, when reporting the perceptions of other women and men, participants reported that other women would view the target more negatively than men would. While these results do not support our original hypothesis, they suggest that women mentally represent the judgments of others, allowing for coordinated condemnation of undesirable behavior.

Our results from these studies provide preliminary support for the hypothesis that women coordinate to condemn potentially sexually permissive women. Our results also indicate that women seem to be aware of and motivated to maintain their bargaining power in relationships (Baumeister & Vohs, 2004; Vohs et al., 2014) by punishing others who appear to be sexually permissive. This awareness, in turn, motivates women to use third-party condemnation (DeScioli and Kurzban, 2009, DeScioli and Kurzban, 2013) to aggress without the threat of direct retaliation. Our results also corroborate previous research showing that women are aware that their clothing choices make them the targets of competition (Krems et al., 2020) and suggests that women are aware of how other women perceive rivals (Wacker et al., 2017), allowing women to coordinate their indirect aggression at these individuals. Our results also add nuance to theories of women's intrasexual competition. Women's intrasexual competition is often described as covert and indirect (Campbell, 1999; Fisher, 2013; Vaillancourt, 2005), but our results document that there may be instances where women's competitive motivations are more overt than previously thought (i.e., when coordinating aggression against a sexually permissive rival).

Research has also outlined a paradox in women's interpersonal relationships. Women's friendships are more likely to be dyadic (David-Barrett et al., 2015; Winstead, 1986), suggesting that women invest their time and energy in a single friend instead of many friends. But women's friendships are also more fragile and less tolerant to issues within the relationship (Benenson, 2013; Benenson et al., 2009; Benenson & Christakos, 2003), suggesting that women's friendships are also more likely to end. Part of this paradox may be attributable to the fact that women's friendships balance cooperative and competitive influences. While women may want to foster emotionally deep bonds with their friends (Wright, 1982), women's indirect aggression and intolerance of slights in their friendships might be caused by coordinated condemnation. Investigating the influences of coordinated condemnation in women's friendships may help researchers understand how conflict in women's friendships manifests and document how women coordinate their aggression with their friends against other potential rivals.

7.1. Limitations and future directions

Our current results support the hypothesis that women represent how other women view rivals. Still, our results did not show that women use these representations to coordinate their aggression. Behavioral observations, such as Vaillancourt and Sharma's (2011), would allow for a more accurate assessment of the use of these representations to aggress against potentially permissive rivals. Additionally, coordinated aggression may bolster research on women's abilities to assess competitors' motivations in interpersonal contexts (Krems, Neel, Neuberg, Puts, & Kenrick, 2016; Krems, Neuberg, Filip-Crawford, & Kenrick, 2015).

Another limitation is that women's perceptions of the target may reflect self-presentation biases. As women's competition is indirect (Benenson, 2013; Campbell, 2013; Vaillancourt, 2013), it is possible that the positive perceptions women reported reflect their motivation to remain anonymous (Campbell, 1999) so they cannot be accused of aggressing against competitors (Fisher, 2013; Vaillancourt, 2005). As such, it is likely that beliefs about other women's perceptions indirectly reflect women's actual competitive motivations (Perilloux & Kurzban, 2015).

Another limitation concerns the target images used in Study 2. We chose target images that had visible tattoos, piercings, and provocative clothing, as these characteristics are believed to be cues of sexual permissiveness (Goetz et al., 2012; Krems et al., 2020; Skoda et al., 2020; Tews et al., 2020). However, it is possible that these images were overwhelming, unbelievable, or presented a demand characteristic. While our results suggest that these confounds did not meaningfully affect our results in the current study, it is also possible that some confounds attenuated the effects of others and led to the appearance of no confounding effect. Unfortunately, since we did not have conservative versions of these stimuli, we cannot tease these possibilities apart in our current data. Future studies could improve upon these limitations by 1) presenting fewer target images with more subtle cues of sexual permissiveness, 2) including control images of provocative images, and 3) focusing on specific cues to sexual permissiveness to document if these cues influence coordinated condemnation.

Another limitation that should be mentioned is the exclusion criteria used in both studies. While the exclusion criteria were determined before data collection for Study 1 began, and were subsequently refined before data collection for Study 2 began, these criteria did result in many participants being excluded from the current analyses (33% in Study 1 and 34% in Study 2). We do not believe that this is an issue for the current study, but it does limit the generalizability of our results. For example, we do not know if we would have found the same effects in a sample that was less honest or paid less attention. We also do not know how differences in women's sexual orientation or gender identity may influence these results, as these groups are often excluded from studies on women's competition. Future research on women's intrasexual competition, and coordinated condemnation in general, would benefit from including these groups to better understand women's competition.

Finally, these experiments are not perfect tests of coordinated condemnation due to the self-report nature of these studies. In addition, there may be additional individual factors, such as age, socioeconomic status, and education level (Campbell, 1999), that influence the saliency and intensity of women's intrasexual competition. As women's competition occurs across the lifespan (Linney, Korologou-Linden, & Campbell, 2016; Low, 2017), domain- and age-specific effects on competition should exist. For example, as women's fundamental social motives become more family-oriented (Ko et al., 2020), women may be less likely to coordinate against sexually permissive women and instead coordinate against women who are perceived as bad mothers. We could not test for the attenuation of this effect and changing motivations in menopausal women (using Gottschalk, Eskild, Hofvind, Gran, & Bjelland, 2020) as there were not enough women in our sample for age-effects to be appropriately powered (5.7% were 52 years or older in Study 1; 1.2% were 52 years or older in Study 2).

Future research would benefit from actively recruiting older women to test for attenuation effects of coordinated condemnation. Similarly, while we asked our participants about their romantic relationships, we did not ask participants how long they had been in a romantic relationship. It would be fruitful for future research to address how romantic relationships influence women's competition and coordinated condemnation, as women in newer, more temporary, or more unstable relationships may respond more competitively to potential relationship threats and direct more aggression towards women who display cues of permissiveness.