Insights into Sexism: Male Status and Performance Moderates Female-Directed Hostile and Amicable Behaviour

Gender inequality and sexist behaviour is prevalent in almost all workplaces and rampant in online environments. Although there is much research dedicated to understanding sexist behaviour, we have almost no insight into what triggers this behaviour and the individuals that initiate it. Although social constructionist theory argues that sexism is a response towards women entering a male dominated arena, this perspective doesn’t explain why only a subset of males behave in this way. We argue that a clearer understanding of sexist behaviour can be gained through an evolutionary perspective that considers evolved differences in intra-sexual competition. We hypothesised that female-initiated disruption of a male hierarchy incites hostile behaviour from poor performing males who stand to lose the most status. To test this hypothesis, we used an online first-person shooter video game that removes signals of dominance but provides information on gender, individual performance, and skill. We show that lower-skilled players were more hostile towards a female-voiced teammate, especially when performing poorly. In contrast, lower-skilled players behaved submissively towards a male-voiced player in the identical scenario. This difference in gender-directed behaviour became more extreme with poorer focal-player performance. We suggest that low-status males increase female-directed hostility to minimize the loss of status as a consequence of hierarchical reconfiguration resulting from the entrance of a woman into the competitive arena. Higher-skilled players, in contrast, were more positive towards a female relative to a male teammate. As higher-skilled players have less to fear from hierarchical reorganization, we argue that these males behave more positively in an attempt to support and garner a female player’s attention. Our results provide the clearest picture of inter-sexual competition to date, highlighting the importance of considering an evolutionary perspective when exploring the factors that affect male hostility towards women.

性别不平等与性别歧视行为在几乎所有职场中均普遍存在，在网络环境中更是尤为猖獗。尽管已有大量研究致力于剖析性别歧视行为，但我们对该行为的诱发因素及其发起者仍几乎一无所知。尽管社会建构主义理论（social constructionist theory）认为，性别歧视是女性进入男性主导领域后的一种应对反应，但该视角无法解释为何仅有部分男性会做出此类行为。我们认为，通过纳入性内竞争（intra-sexual competition）演化差异的进化视角，能够更清晰地理解性别歧视行为。我们提出假说：女性对男性等级体系的破坏，会引发表现较差的男性产生敌对行为——这类男性恰恰是最有可能失去地位的群体。为验证该假说，我们采用了一款能够移除支配地位信号，但可提供参与者性别、个人表现与技能水平信息的第一人称射击类电子游戏（first-person shooter video game）。我们的研究结果显示，技术水平较低的玩家对使用女声的队友表现得更具敌意，尤其是在自身表现不佳的情况下。与之形成鲜明对比的是，在完全相同的情境中，技术水平较低的玩家对使用男声的玩家则表现得更为顺从。这种针对不同性别的行为差异，会随着被试玩家表现越差而愈发显著。我们据此认为，地位较低的男性会提升对女性的敌对行为，以尽可能减少因女性进入竞争领域导致等级体系重构而带来的地位损失。与之相反，技术水平较高的玩家对女性队友的态度要比对男性队友更为积极。由于技术水平较高的玩家无需担心等级体系重构带来的影响，我们认为这类男性表现得更为积极，是为了支持女性玩家并博取其关注。本研究结果为迄今有关性间竞争（inter-sexual competition）的研究提供了最为清晰的图景，同时凸显了在探究影响男性对女性产生敌对行为的因素时，纳入进化视角的重要性。