Dangerous Motivations: Understanding How Marginalization Relates to Benevolent Sexism Through Threat Perceptions

In the present study, we draw from ambivalent sexism and frameworks centering marginalization to investigate how individuals’ marginalized race or gender identity influences their perceptions of benevolent sexism. We conducted an experimental scenario study during which a sample of Black and White adult participants (n = 325; M_age = 25.89 years) read a vignette about an interaction where a man student (perpetrator) gives a protective justification for restricting a woman student’s (target) involvement in one of two tasks for a class project. Participants were then asked about how dangerous they believed the tasks were, how they believed the woman target felt after her behavior was restricted, and whether they believed the man perpetrator had benevolent or malevolent motivations behind his restrictive behavior. We theorized that participants with marginalized race-gender identities would be more sensitive to threat, and consequently, that they would be more accepting of paternalistic behaviors. Our results supported the hypotheses: we found that compared to White men, participants with marginalized race and/or gender identities perceived the restricted task described in the vignettes as more dangerous and were consequently more likely to perceive the woman target as feeling more positively about her treatment and to perceive the man perpetrator as having more benevolent (and less malevolent) motivations for his behavior. These results suggest that individuals’ marginalized race or gender identities may influence their perceptions of benevolent sexism through their impact on how members from these groups perceive threat. The implications of study findings for future research and policy are discussed.