Spanish Women Making Risky Decisions in the Social Domain: The Mediating Role of Femininity and Fear of Negative Evaluation.

Laura Villanueva-Moya,Francisca Expósito

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.561715

Abstract

Authors have empirically evidenced that cultural stereotypes influence gender-typed behavior. With the present work, we have added to this literature by demonstrating that gender roles can explain sex differences in risk-taking, a stereotypically masculine domain. Our aim was to replicate previous findings and to analyze what variables affect women making risky decisions in the social domain. A sample composed of 417 Spanish participants (281 women and 136 men), between 17 and 30 years old (M = 22.34, SD = 3.01), answered a set of self-report measures referring to femininity, fear of negative evaluation, and social risk-taking. According to the main results, sex indirectly linked to risk-taking in the social domain, through femininity and fear of negative evaluation. Specifically, women (vs. men) self-reported higher feminine traits, which were associated with increased fear of negative evaluation, which in turn was associated with less risky decisions in the social domain. Thus, we have showed the relationship between gender roles and women’s behaviors in a stereotypically masculine domain (risk-taking). Our findings highlight the necessity of considering a gender-based perspective in the field of risk-taking, showing that not all women make more risky decisions in the social domain.

Highlights

Notwithstanding an increase in women and men occupying nontraditional domains, gender stereotypes are still present in society and influence women’s and men’s behaviors (Eagly and Wood, 2016)
The results show that gender roles and fear of negative evaluation (FNE) – psychosocial variables – are plausible explanatory factors in the relation between women and higher risk-taking in the social domain
Extending prior research that showed that gender stereotypes and FNE can explain women’s behaviors in stereotypically masculine domains (e.g., Chalabaev et al, 2013), such as risk-taking (Morgenroth et al, 2018), we found that women in general make greater risk decisions in the social domain than men do (Hypothesis 1c), in line with previous studies (Blais and Weber, 2006; Lozano et al, 2017; Morgenroth et al, 2018)

Summary

Introduction

Notwithstanding an increase in women and men occupying nontraditional domains, gender stereotypes are still present in society and influence women’s and men’s behaviors (Eagly and Wood, 2016). From a gender-based perspective, we proposed that these differences could be due to the influence of other variables, such as femininity and fear of negative evaluation In this sense, previous research has shown traditional gender roles (femininity) increase the preference for stereotypically feminine domains (e.g., Dinella et al, 2014). Persons who identify themselves as more feminine – usually women – seem to be concerned about others’ expectations of them, given that they have to behave in a manner consistent with their gender role (Eagly, 1987) Their behavior seems to tend to avoid the prospect of being evaluated negatively, decreasing their participation in stereotypically masculine domains, such as sports (e.g., Yi-Hsiu and Chen-Yueh, 2013). We have reported a genderbased perspective on how, through femininity and fear of negative evaluation, women make decisions in the stereotypically masculine domain of risk-taking

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Discussion

Conclusion