Women's Behavioral Manifestations of Traditionalist and Liberated Role Concepts

Summary

The purpose of the study was to test the basic assumption that traditionalist women in the West view a male as a superior, whereas liberated women do not. The design was based on a series of five studies by Hokanson and his colleagues in which the perceived superiority of a frustrator determined the reduction or retention of systolic blood pressure arousal following harassment in a no opportunity to aggress situation. A 2 × 2 × 2 experimental design was used in which the sex of the E, status of the E, and attitude of the S were the independent variables; change in systolic blood pressure in the S after harassment was the dependent variable. The difference scores between the harassment and post-harassment phases yielded an F of 82.63 (p < .05) for the interaction between the sex of the E and the attitude of the S. There were no other significant variables. Traditionalist Ss showed a significant drop in blood pressure arousal after harassment by a male E but a retention of arousal with a female E, whereas liberated women showed the opposite pattern. This finding was consistent with Hokanson's theoretical/empirical model indicating that traditionalist women view a male as a superior and liberated women do not. Further, the liberated women demonstrated behaviorally that they viewed other women as superiors. Therefore, it may be concluded that women holding strongly opposing views towards the women's role show a marked dichotomous sexist bias toward an E.