Men's Attitudes toward Women: The Effect of Women's Dating Initiation and Intelligence
Abstract
This study investigated men's attitudes toward intelligent vs. unintelligent women and women who do vs. do not initiate dates. Subjects were 209 male introductory psychology students. Each viewed one of four videotapes showing a male-female conversation. In a 2X2 between- subjects design, the female model was portrayed as being either intelligent or unintelligent, and she either did or did not ask the male for a date at the end of the conversation. The men rated the female model on 53 bipolar adjectives. These ratings were factor analyzed in order to reduce the number of dependent variables. Two different factor analysis techniques were used. A series of two-way analyses of variance was conducted on the factor scores to assess the impact of the woman's intelligence and dating-initiation on men's attitudes toward women.
Main effects were found in which the intelligent model was rated as more intelligent, less sexually active, more assertive, less likely to form serious relationships, and less truthful than the unintelligent woman. The model who asked for a date was rated as more sexually active, more flexible, and more assertive than the woman who did not ask for a date. Several interactions were also found. These results were discussed as related to the relevant literature.
This study also investigated how men's ratings were affected by several subject variables: traditional vs. untraditional attitudes toward women, achievement motivation, grade point ratio, and ability to initiate dates and conversations with unfamiliar women. A series of three-way analyses of variance was conducted to investigate the effects of intelligence, dating initiation, and each subject variable on men's impressions of the female model. The most noteable finding was that significant results were few in number and theoretically uninterpretable.
Implications for women were discussed.
Description
Program year: 1982-1983Digitized from print original stored in HDR
Subject
gender rolesattitudes toward women
perception of intelligence
dating behavior
date initiation
Citation
Scardino, Teresa Jo (1983). Men's Attitudes toward Women: The Effect of Women's Dating Initiation and Intelligence. University Undergraduate Fellows. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /CAPSTONE -ScardinoT _1983.