Sentiments of sexism: Cultural transmission and men's motivation.

Abstract

This work fulfills a three-fold purpose. First, it identifies and conceptualizes patriarchal imposition as a social problem. Patriarchal imposition refers to a category of micro-level, social interaction in which male actors attain desired social outcomes at the expense of female actors. Date rape provides an example of such imposition. Second, this work elaborates an integrative theoretical understanding of the socio-cultural production of patriarchal imposition by joining three diverse paradigms: abstract individualism, social rationalism, and identity maintenance. Integration is accomplished by providing elaborations of each paradigm separately, by critically comparing propositions generated from each paradigm, and by treating mutually exclusive propositions as suggesting alternative pathways in the production of social action. This integration yields three central propositions: (1) the socio-cultural presentation of stereotypically dominant male identities and stereotypically submissive female identities influences men's motivation for patriarchal imposition, (2) the socio-cultural presentation of gendered conflicts of interest with respect to outcomes of social interaction influences men's motivation for patriarchal imposition, and (3) the socio-cultural presentation of males as disproportionately successful in attaining desired outcomes in gendered conflict influences men's motivation for patriarchal imposition. In addressing the third purpose, this work applies a unique method of content analysis on a sample of popular motion pictures, the top-ten box-office successes for each year 1986-1990. This content analysis deconstructs the sample into an aggregate data set of gendered relationships and interaction events of gendered conflict. Statistical procedures of logistic regression are applied to this data, and results support each central proposition. Qualitative interpretation of the data provide further support and also identify emergent themes in the cultural portrayal of gendered conflict. These results indicate that paradigmatic debate of patriarchal culture's influence on men's motivation disguises the reality that varying perspectives offer similar conclusions, namely that patriarchal culture does influence men's motivation for patriarchal imposition in various ways. The real debate concerns the politics of social change.