The 2016 U.S. presidential election provided a pertinent context for investigating novel influences on system-related beliefs. We examined Trump and Clinton supporters’ sexist attitudes toward women, perceptions of gender discrimination, and system justification before and after the election. Controlling for conservatism, we found that (a) Trump supporters reported more modern and hostile sexism than Clinton supporters; (b) male Trump supporters perceived greater gender discrimination toward men than male Clinton supporters, an effect mediated by sexist attitudes toward women; (c) female Trump supporters perceived less gender discrimination toward women than female Clinton supporters, an effect also mediated by sexist attitudes toward women; and (d) system justification increased among Trump supporters but decreased among Clinton supporters postelection. These results extend the existing literature on system-related beliefs by revealing the role of antifeminism and misogyny in shaping perceptions of gender discrimination and highlighting how political outcomes are associated with system threat versus reinforcement.
AzevedoF.JostJ. T.RothmundT. (2017). “Making America great again”: System justification in the U.S. presidential election of 2016. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 3, 231–240. doi:10.1037/tps0000122
BockJ.Byrd-CravenJ.BurkleyM. (2017). The role of sexism in voting in the 2016 presidential election. Personality and Individual Differences, 119, 189–193. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2017.07.026
5.
CarterE. R.MurphyM. C. (2017). Consensus and consistency: Exposure to multiple discrimination claims shapes Whites’ intergroup attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 73, 24–33. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2017.06.001
6.
CrandallC. S.EshlemanA.O’BrienL. (2002). Social norms and the expression and suppression of prejudice: The struggle for internalization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 359–378. doi:10.1037/0022–3514.82.3.359
7.
CrandallC. S.MillerJ. M.WhiteM. H. (2018). Changing norms following the 2016 U.S. presidential election: The Trump effect on prejudice. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9, 186–192. doi:10.1177/1948550617750735
8.
CrosbyF. (1984). The denial of personal discrimination. American Behavioral Scientist, 27, 371–386. doi:10.1177/000276484027003008
9.
DoesS.GündemirS.ShihM. (2018). The divided states of America: How the 2016 U.S. presidential election shaped perceived levels of gender inequality. Social and Personality Science. Advanced online publication. doi:10.1177/1948550618757033
FalkE.KenskiK. (2006). Sexism versus partisanship: A new look at the question of whether America is ready for a woman president. Sex Roles, 54, 413–428. doi:10.1007/s11199-006-9025-z
12.
FaulF.ErdfelderE.BuchnerA.LangA. (2009). Statistical power analyses using G*Power 3.1: Tests for correlation and regression analyses. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 1149–1160. doi:10.3758/BRM.41.4.1149
13.
FiskeS. T.StevensL. E. (1993). What’s so special about sex? Gender stereotyping and discrimination. In OskampS.ConstanzoM. (Eds.), Claremont Symposium on Applied Social Psychology. Vol 6: Gender issues in contemporary society (pp. 173–196). Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.
14.
GlickP.FiskeS. T. (1996). The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating hostile and benevolent sexism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 491–512. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.70.3.491
15.
HakimN. H.MolinaL. E.BranscombeN. R. (2018). How discrimination shapes social identification processes and well-being among Arab Americans. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9, 328–337. doi:10.1177/1948550617742192
HayesA. F. (2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
18.
JostJ. T.BanajiM. R. (1994). The role of stereotyping in system-justification and the production of false consciousness. British Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 1–27. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8309.1994.tb01008.x
19.
JostJ. T.BanajiM. R.NosekB. A. (2004). A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology, 25, 881–919. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00402.x
20.
JostJ. T.Chaikalis-PetritsisV.AbramsD.SidaniusJ.van der ToornJ.BrattC. (2012). Why men (and women) do and don’t rebel: Effects of system justification on willingness to protest. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 197–208. doi:10.1177/0146167211422544
21.
JostJ. T.GlaserJ.KruglanskiA. W.SullowayF. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339–375. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.339
22.
JostJ. T.HunyadyO. (2005). Antecedents and consequences of system-justifying ideologies. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 260–265. doi:10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00377.x
23.
JostJ. T.NosekB. A.GoslingS. D. (2008). Ideology: Its resurgence in social, personality, and political psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 126–136. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00070.x
24.
JostJ. T.van der ToornJ. (2012). System justification theory. In van LangeP. A. M.KruglanskiA. W.HigginsE. T. (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 313–343). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.
KaiserC. R.DruryB. J.SpaldingK. E.CheryanS.O’BrienL. T. (2009). The ironic consequences of Obama’s election: Decreased support for social justice. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 556–559. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2009.01.006
27.
KawakamiJ.DionK. L. (1995). Social identity and affect as determinants of collective action: Toward an integration of relative deprivation and social identity theories. Organizational Psychology Review, 5, 551–577. doi:10.1177/0959354395054005
28.
KayA. C.FriesenJ. (2011). On social stability and social change. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 360–364. doi:10.1177/0963721411422059
29.
KayA. C.JostJ. T. (2003). Complementary justice: Effects of “poor but happy” and “poor but honest” stereotype exemplars on system justification and implicit activation of the justice motive. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 823–837. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.85.5.823
30.
KellyC.BreinlingerS. (1995). Attitudes, intentions, and behavior: A study of women’s participation in collective action. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 25, 1430–1445. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1995.tb02625.x
31.
KteilyN.BruneauE. (2017). Backlash: The politics and real-world consequences of minority group dehumanization. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43, 87–104. doi:10.1177/0146167216675334
32.
LipkusI. (1991). The construction and preliminary validation of a Global Belief in a Just World Scale and the exploratory analysis of the Multidimensional Belief in a Just World Scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 12, 1171–1178. doi:10.1016/0191-8869(91)90081-L
33.
LybargerJ. E.MonteithM. J. (2011). The effect of Obama saliency on individual-level racial bias: Silver bullet or smokescreen?Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 647–652. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2010.12.001
34.
MajorB.QuintonW. J.SchmaderT. (2003). Attributions to discrimination and self-esteem: Impact of group identification and situational ambiguity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 220–231. doi:10.1016/S0022-1031(02)00547-4
MoghaddamF. M.StalkinA. J.HutchesonL. S. (1997). A generalized personal/group discrepancy: Testing the domain specificity of a perceived higher effect of events on one’s group than on oneself. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 743–750. doi:10.1177/0146167297237007
37.
MonteithM. J.BurnsM. D.RuppD. E.Mihalec-AdkinsB. P. (2016). Out of work and out of luck? Layoffs, system justification, and hiring decisions for people who have been laid off. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7, 77–84. doi:10.1177/1948550615599827
38.
NortonM. I.SommersS. R. (2011). Whites see racism as a zero-sum game that they are now losing. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 215–218. doi:10.1177/1745691611406922
39.
OperarioD.FiskeS. T. (2001). Ethnic identity moderates perceptions of prejudice: Judgments of personal versus group discrimination and subtle versus blatant bias. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 550–561. doi:10.1177/0146167201275004
40.
PettigrewT. (2017). Social psychological perspectives on Trump supporters. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 5. doi:10.5964/jspp.v5i1.750
41.
RatliffK. A.RedfordL.ConwayJ.SmithC. T. (2017). Engendering support: Hostile sexism predicts voting for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. Advanced online publication. doi:10.1177/1368430217741203
42.
RothwellV.HodsonG.PrusaczykE. (2019). Why pillory Hillary? Testing the endemic sexism hypothesis regarding the 2016 U.S. election. Personality and Individual Differences, 138, 106–108. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2018.09.034
43.
SchmittM. T.BranscombeN. R.KobrynowiczD.OwenS. (2002). Perceiving discrimination against one’s gender group has different implications for well-being in women and men. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 197–210. doi:10.1177/0146167202282006
SwimJ. K.AikinK. J.HallW. S.HunterB. A. (1995). Sexism and racism: Old-fashioned and modern prejudices. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 199–214. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.68.2
46.
TaylorD. M.WrightS. C.MoghaddamF. M.LalondeR. N. (1990). The personal/group discrimination discrepancy: Perceiving my group, but not myself, to be a target for discrimination. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 16, 254–262. doi:10.1177/0146167290162006
UllrichJ.CohrsJ. C. (2007). Terrorism salience increases system justification: Experimental evidence. Social Justice Research, 20, 117–139. doi:10.1007/s11211-007-0035-y
49.
ValentinoN. A.WayneC.OcenoM. (2018). Mobilizing sexism: The interaction of emotion and gender attitudes in the 2016 US presidential election. Public Opinion Quarterly, 82, 213–235. doi:10.1093/poq/nfy003
50.
WilkinsC. L.KaiserC. R. (2014). Racial progress as a threat to the status hierarchy: Implications for perceptions of anti-White bias. Psychological Science, 25, 439–446. doi:10.1177/0956797613508412
51.
WilkinsC. L.WellmanJ. D.BabbittL. G.ToosiN. R.SchadK. D. (2015). You win but I can’t lose: Bias against high-status groups increases their zero-sum beliefs about discrimination. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 57, 1–14. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2014.10.008
52.
WomickJ.RothmundT.AzevedoF.KingL. A.JostJ. T. (2018). Group-based dominance and authoritarian aggression predict support for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Social Psychological and Personality Science. Advanced online publication. doi:10.1177/1948550618778290
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
