The impact of hostile and benevolent sexism on young women’s cognitive response and productivity

The negative impact of sexism on women's health and well-being is well documented in various studies. Despite that, researchers have yet to consider how different type of sexism (e. g. hostile and benevolent) affects women’s cognitive response and productivity. This study was aimed to evaluate distinct effects of hostile and benevolent sexism on young women’s cognitive response and productivity. 45 volunteers' female students of different bachelor and master studies at Vytautas Magnus University (mean age – 21.11 years; SD=1.92) participated in the experiment with three conditions (hostile sexism, benevolent sexism, or control (non-sexist) condition). They had to perform a word association task after exposure to hostilely sexist, benevolently sexist, or non-sexist comment from a male investigator. Remote Associates Task (RAT) developed by Mednick (1968) was used to measure how different forms of sexism affect woman’s cognitive productivity. Each task consisted of three words that were related. Participants had to generate fourth word (solution) which was associated with other three. Productivity was measured by the number of correct solution words. The cognitive response to hostile or benevolent sexism was measured by Ruminative thoughts of incompetency scale (Dumont et al., 2010). Using scale of 1 (never came to mind) to 9 (came to mind very often), participants indicated how often they entertained 14 thoughts of incompetence and self-criticism during the task. Before the participation in the experiment, endorsement of hostile and benevolent sexism of participants using Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick & Fiske, 1996) was measured. The results showed that woman displayed more ruminative thoughts of incompetence and produced less correct answers during the task following hostile sexism and benevolent sexism compared to no-sexism (p<.01). Women’s endorsement of hostile and benevolent sexist beliefs was not significantly related (p>.05) to their cognitive response (expression of the ruminative thoughts) and productivity (number of correct answers to the RAT). These findings indicate that women’s responses to hostile and benevolent sexism do not differ but both forms of sexism may cause negative consequences in young women's life.