Think of an imaginary person who has a strong moral compass. According to a series of recent experiments, you probably just pictured a woman or a girl. 快猫短视频s have found that we tend to associate morality more closely with femininity than masculinity, which may pose a surprising disadvantage for women.
and her colleagues聽at Boston College in Massachusetts wanted to better understand the traits and attitudes that we ascribe to people who are considered morally good.
They first had 270 people look at pairs of images of people of an unknown gender and choose who they thought looked the most moral. In 99 per cent of cases, the image that they ranked as being more feminine was also whom they considered to be morally superior.
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In another experiment, a separate 282 people were presented with a list of traits, which they were asked to ascribe to either femininity or masculinity. The researchers found that traits like being angelic or peaceful were more commonly considered to be feminine, while having a challenging disposition was linked to being masculine.
鈥淲e see really consistent results across these studies despite them having very different methodologies,鈥� says Wylie.
To assess the effects of these associations, 1600 people were asked to judge the morality of an average man and woman, which they did again after hearing about certain moral shortcomings, such as them turning in someone else鈥檚 work project under their own name.
The results suggest that women experience a greater fall in their perceived morality than men for the same transgressions, which could be interpreted as them being held to a higher standard and then being judged more for failing to live up to it, according to the researchers.
鈥淢orality is ultimately about bringing people together to cooperate, and in our society, it so happens that women are more expected to cooperate,鈥� says at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Being seen as more moral might mean that women feel pressured into following societal rules, such as dressing a certain way. 鈥淏ut what happens if the rules are unjust?鈥� he asks.
The study is a reminder to be aware of our biases and think about how they might influence our decisions, says at Columbia University in New York. 鈥淥ur biases are so deeply ingrained that they can operate without our even realising it, but that doesn鈥檛 mean we can鈥檛 scrutinise our impressions and think carefully about them,鈥� he says.
PsyArXiv
