You’re making us all look bad : sexism moderates women’s experience of collective threat and intra-gender hostility toward traditional and non-traditional female subtypes

Across two studies (Ns = 265 and 735), we investigated whether women’s endorsement of hostile (HS) and benevolent sexism (BS) moderate their experience of collective threat and subsequent hostility toward traditional and non-traditional female subtypes. As expected, HS was positively associated with intra-gender hostility towards the non-traditional subtype, and these effects were mediated by collective threat. HS was negatively associated with collective threat and hostility towards the traditional subtype, but only when the target endorsed prescriptive gender beliefs that explicitly reinforced gender inequality. BS was associated with collective threat and hostility toward the non-traditional subtype, but these effects did not emerge consistently across both studies. These results suggest that women are not a homogeneous group whose members all find the same subtypes collectively threatening. Rather, the extent to which women internalize patriarchal attitudes and stereotypes influences the behaviors they find threatening and deserving of hostility.