Research suggesting men are superior to women in certain aspects is often viewed less favorably than research showing the opposite. But why? A recent study examined this issue, finding evidence that perceived harm to women is a key factor driving negative reactions to male-favoring findings. The new study has been published in the International Journal of Psychology.
“For the last few years, my lab has been studying how people react to research on sex differences,” said study author Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill), a professor of psychology at the University of Nottingham Malaysia.
“A very consistent finding is that people react less positively to research that puts men rather than women in a better light. For example, people see fictitious research showing that men are better at drawing, more honest, or smarter than women as lower in quality than otherwise-identical fictitious research showing the reverse.”
“We wanted to know why. Our hypothesis was that a key contributor is that people see male-favoring research as more harmful to women than female-favoring research is to men. Our new paper describes an experiment we conducted to test this hypothesis.”
To conduct this exploration, the researchers recruited 433 participants through Prolific.com, an online platform known for facilitating academic research. These participants were a mix of 214 men and 219 women, ranging in age from 18 to 75 years, with a substantial majority hailing from the United Kingdom (82.4%) and the United States (14.1%).
After providing demographic information, participants were introduced to the study’s context through a preamble embedded in the introduction. This preamble was crucial, as it was designed to prime participants with a certain perspective on sex-differences research by highlighting either its potential benefits or drawbacks.
The benefits perspective was encapsulated in a quote emphasizing the risk to women’s health from ignoring sex differences in brain responses to drugs. Conversely, the drawbacks perspective featured a quote suggesting that emphasizing distinct male and female brains could exaggerate sex differences and discourage gender equality in fields like science.
Following this preamble, participants were presented with one of four versions of a popular-science article summarizing the findings of a fictional study on sex differences in intelligence. This fictional study was carefully crafted to appear legitimate, with summaries claiming either that women are more intelligent than men or vice versa.
To further manipulate the experimental conditions, the study was purported to be led by either a male or a female researcher, with names and photographs selected to avoid confounding factors related to the researchers’ perceived traits other than sex.
“As with our previous studies, we showed participants bogus research finding either a male-favoring or a female-favoring sex difference, then quizzed them about their reactions to the research,” Stewart-Williams explained. “The twist, however, was that before doing this, we surreptitiously exposed them to either a statement about how research on sex differences can be harmful to women (by reinforcing harmful stereotypes) or a statement about how it can be helpful to women (by making medical interventions safer for them).”
In line with previous findings, Stewart-Williams and his colleagues observed a general aversion to male-favoring research findings. Participants rated research that purported to show males as more intelligent than females less positively than research suggesting the opposite.
Interestingly, the sex of the participant did not significantly alter the strength of this aversion. Both men and women exhibited similar levels of negative reactions to male-favoring findings, challenging the notion that gender-ingroup bias (a preference for one’s own gender) plays a major role in these reactions.
The study also investigated the role of the fictional lead researcher’s sex in shaping reactions to the research. Here, a subtle but intriguing pattern emerged: participants reacted slightly less positively to male-led research, particularly when the findings favored males. This effect was more pronounced among male participants, suggesting that the credibility or acceptability of male-favoring findings may be somewhat contingent on the perceived gender neutrality of the researcher presenting those findings.
Another significant aspect of the study was the experimental manipulation of participants’ pre-existing attitudes towards sex-differences research through the preliminary passage they read. Those exposed to a passage highlighting the potential drawbacks of sex-differences research reacted more negatively to the fictitious findings than those who read about its potential benefits. This was especially true for female participants in the context of male-favoring research, reinforcing the idea that concerns about harm to women underpin much of the aversion to such findings.
“As predicted, participants in the ‘harmful’ condition had a stronger negative reaction to the male-favoring findings than those in the ‘helpful’ condition,” Stewart-Williams told PsyPost. “This suggests that perceived harm to women is an important driver of the aversion to male-favoring findings.”
Collectively, these findings support the notion that perceptions of harm and protective attitudes towards women play a crucial role in shaping reactions to sex-differences research. This suggests a genuine concern for the potential societal impact of male-favoring research, particularly in terms of reinforcing harmful stereotypes or undermining efforts towards gender equality.
“The male-favoring aversion comes from a good place: People want to protect women,” Stewart-Williams said. “But the fact that it comes from a good place doesn’t necessarily mean that its effects are good. I always tell students that to improve the world, we need accurate knowledge about the world. Sometimes, that knowledge might be a bit of a downer. But if we want to craft successful interventions and policy, we’re better off knowing than not knowing.”
“I’ll give you a concrete example. On average, girls and women do slightly worse than boys and men on most tests of spatial ability. That’s not good news. But because we spotted this difference, psychologists were able to develop interventions that boost people’s spatial abilities. If we’d suppressed the findings to spare people’s feelings, we wouldn’t have those interventions.”
“And of course, the same applies in reverse in areas where boys and men do worse than girls and women – in verbal abilities, for instance,” Stewart-Williams noted.
The study controlled for important factors that could influence the results, such as political correctness or social desirability bias. However, the research is not without its limitations. The generalizability of the findings across different cultures and among experts and policymakers remains to be tested. Furthermore, the study’s reliance on fictitious research summaries and preambles introduces a level of artificiality that might not fully capture the complexities of real-world reactions to sex-differences research.
“One caveat is that the study involved self-report measures, and that it’s possible that people’s responses were distorted by the desire to present themselves in a socially desirable light or by a tendency to give ‘politically correct’ answers,” Stewart-Williams explained.
“To try to control for this, we measured social desirability bias and proneness to political correctness, then reran our analyses while statistically controlling for these variables. The results were exactly the same, boosting our confidence that our findings are real. Still, it would be great if we could test the hypothesis in other ways – ways that don’t involve self-report measures.”
Despite these limitations, the study’s implications are profound, suggesting that societal and individual biases can significantly shape our reactions to scientific research, especially on contentious topics like sex differences. This bias could potentially influence the peer review process, funding decisions, and the broader scientific discourse.
“I’d just like to give a shout-out to my excellent co-authors: Dr. Christine Leong, Shania Seto, Dr. Andrew Thomas, and – first and foremost – my PhD student Xiu Ling Wong,” Stewart-Williams added. “It’s been a fun project, and I couldn’t have done it without them!”
The study, “The harm hypothesis: How perceived harm to women shapes reactions to research on sex differences,” was published January 3, 2024.
