Theorizing and Studying Reactions to Gender Norm Violations

Abstract

Reactions to gender norm violations include social evaluations and behavioral responses to individuals who deviate from the gender norms associated with their perceived gender. Research has for a long time studied negative reactions, in many subdisciplines (Li & Wei, 2022; Lobel et al., 2004; Rudman, 1998), from different theoretical frameworks (Iacoviello et al., 2021; Rudman, Moss-Racusin, Glick, et al., 2012), and using various methods (Kleiser & Mayeux, 2023; Rudman, Moss-Racusin, Phelan, et al., 2012; Yu et al., 2017). The literature on this phenomenon seems to be split between youth research (i.e., children or adolescents as targets of reactions) and adult research (i.e., adults as targets of reactions) as the two have very rarely overlapped. In this paper, we argue that the lack of overlap and acknowledgment of other research working on the same core phenomenon has led to a literature of conflicting theoretical perspectives that are apparent in both the mechanisms supposedly at play and the predictions that can be drawn from theories. Furthermore, we argue that this lack of integration of the literature has inhibited researchers from incorporating contrasting findings, meaning findings of different kinds of reactions (i.e., more positive reactions, Meijs et al., 2015; Meimoun et al., 2023), into their work and thus into theoretical conceptualizations. We end this article by providing a list of recommendations for future research, as well as important research questions that could be addressed by researchers in order to more fully understand the reactions that people have to those who violate gender norms.