Threats to women’s physical femininity can significantly increase anxiety and reduce self-esteem, according to new research published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. This research challenges previous notions that only men react negatively to threats against their gender stereotypicality, offering a new understanding of how gender stereotypes affect women, particularly in terms of their physical appearance.
Women have been advised to adopt traditionally masculine behaviors to succeed in various spheres of life. Despite such trends towards gender nonconformity, the impact of gender stereotypes, especially concerning physical appearance, on psychological well-being remained underexplored.
Previous studies predominantly focused on the psychological aspects of gender stereotyping, often overlooking the significance of physical appearance in shaping individuals’ experiences with gender conformity. This gap motivated Yale University researchers to conduct the current study, which sought to examine the psychological effects of perceived threats to gender stereotypicality in physical appearance among women and to compare these effects with those experienced by men.
To investigate these potential effects, the researchers first conducted a series of three experiments that involved manipulating feedback regarding women’s physical femininity. In total, 920 participants for these studies were recruited online, utilizing platforms such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and Prolific Academic. The recruitment process ensured a diverse sample of cisgender women, aiming to capture a wide range of responses to the experimental manipulations.
Participants were randomly assigned to receive either affirming or threatening feedback about their physical appearance, specifically their facial femininity. This feedback was carefully crafted to suggest to participants that their facial characteristics either conformed to or deviated from typical gender norms. To bolster the credibility of this feedback, participants were informed that a neural network-based image analysis software assessed their facial appearance against a database of gender and age-group norms.
In addition to manipulating feedback on physical femininity, the experiments also controlled for variables such as perceived physical attractiveness. This was to ensure that any psychological effects observed could be attributed to perceptions of gender stereotypicality rather than general attractiveness. Measures of state anxiety and self-esteem were administered to assess the psychological impact of the feedback.
A consistent pattern emerged where cisgender women reported higher levels of state anxiety when they received feedback suggesting their physical appearance was less feminine than average, compared to when they received affirming feedback regarding their femininity.
Surprisingly, these threats to physical femininity did not significantly affect participants’ self-perceived physical attractiveness, suggesting that the anxiety induced by femininity threats was not merely a byproduct of concerns over general attractiveness. This finding emphasizes the distinct psychological significance of gender conformity in physical appearance, separate from attractiveness.
The researchers expanded upon these initial findings by comparing the responses of both women and men to threats to their gender stereotypicality, encompassing both physical appearance and personality domains. For this experiment, the researchers recruited a sample of 822 women and 752 men via Prolific.
The participants were instructed to record and submit videos of themselves, which were then purportedly analyzed by neural network-based software to assess either the femininity/masculinity of their physical appearance or their personality. The feedback provided was crafted to either affirm or threaten the participant’s conformity to gender stereotypes within the designated domain.
Women reported increased state anxiety and decreased self-esteem in response to threats to their physical femininity compared to when their physical femininity was affirmed. This effect was specific to the domain of physical appearance, as threats to psychological femininity did not elicit the same psychological response, underscoring the particular salience of physical appearance in women’s experiences of gender stereotypicality.
In contrast, men showed heightened anxiety in response to masculinity threats, but this effect was observed across both domains of physical appearance and personality. Surprisingly, the effect was particularly pronounced for threats to physical masculinity, suggesting that, similar to women, men also place significant psychological importance on conforming to gender stereotypes in physical appearance.
Additionally, the study found that threats to physical femininity, but not psychological femininity, led to reduced self-esteem among women, highlighting the unique vulnerability of women’s self-esteem to perceptions of physical gender conformity. Conversely, men did not exhibit a significant change in self-esteem in response to masculinity threats, suggesting possible differences in how gender stereotypicality threats impact self-esteem across genders.
An exploratory analysis suggested that felt identity invalidation — particularly the discrepancy between the feedback received and participants’ internal sense of self — might serve as a mechanism explaining the increased anxiety and decreased self-esteem among women facing physical femininity threats. This finding provides a potential psychological pathway through which gender stereotypicality threats exert their effects, although further research using validated measures is needed to confirm this relationship.
“Although past work has demonstrated that women do not experience anxiety in response to threats to their psychological femininity, the present studies reveal that women do, indeed, experience heightened levels of anxiety—as well as reduced levels of self-esteem—in response to threats to the femininity of their physical appearance,” the researchers concluded. “Furthermore, the current studies provide evidence that these effects are not the result of women interpreting threats to their physical femininity as threats to their physical attractiveness. Rather, they may result from a sense of identity invalidation that threats to gender stereotypicality evoke, though more research is needed to determine whether this is indeed the case.”
“Finally, these studies reveal that men experience anxiety (but not reduced self-esteem) in response to masculinity threats across the domains of personality and physical appearance—but that this effect is particularly strong in the case of threats to physical masculinity. Overall, the current research highlights the central role that expectations about women and men’s physical characteristics, in additional to their psychological characteristics, play in in the dynamics and consequences of gender stereotyping.”
The study, “US cisgender women’s psychological responses to physical femininity threats: Increased anxiety, reduced self-esteem,” was authored by Natalie M. Wittlin, Marianne LaFrance, John F. Dovidio, and Jennifer A. Richeson.