It was 1978. Having a graduate student office with a 13th story view of the Boston skyline seemed fantastic. Except that my office originally was meant to hold the secretary-receptionist for the professor within. People were always seeking directions, the use of my phone, an appointment with said professor, or change for the soda machine. But I would not trade offices. Being mistaken for the secretary was a small price to pay for having my own office, with a window, next door to my advisor, Shelley Taylor.

A struggle since at least my suffragist great-grandmother, combining committed work and close relationships remains a challenge. My foremothers’ experiences and my own rocky life illustrate choices both happy and sad; observing the women in my family suggests that either all work or all family can frustrate anyone reasonably ambitious or easily bored. Aiming to have both love and work, I watched role models, concentrating first on the career, then looking for a spouse. Career lessons: attend to local politics; heed advice; bridge the gap between areas; metabolize failure. Perseverance furthers in matters of both mind and heart but not both at once. The mind being at work, the heart hunts. Proximity predicted success, yielding one long-term relationship with a neighbor and (separately) others met at work (with appropriate consent and discretion). Sometimes, somehow, some can have it all, but much depends on making the most of serendipity.

Humans have long developed the automatic ability to prioritize social perception. Whether traveling ancient, dusty roads thousands of years past or meandering metropolitan blocks long after midnight, people must immediately answer two critical questions in a sudden encounter with a stranger. First, one must determine if the stranger is a friend or foe (i.e., harbors good or ill intent), and second, one must ask how capable the other is of carrying out those intentions. Since ancestral times, these two questions have been crucial for the survival of humans as social animals. The ability to quickly and accurately categorize others as friend or foe would have profoundly influenced the production and perception of social signals exchanged between agents. In developing computational analyses of human behavior, researchers and technicians alike can benefit from a thorough understanding of social categorization – the automatic process by which humans perceive others as friend or foe. This chapter will describe over a decade of research emerging from social psychological laboratories, cross-cultural research, and surveys that confirm two universal dimensions of social cognition: warmth (friendliness, trustworthiness) and competence (ability, efficacy) (see Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007, for an earlier review).

Foundational Research

Although appearing under different labels, the warmth and competence dimensions have consistently emerged in classical and contemporary studies of person perception (Asch, 1946; Rosenberg, Nelson, & Vivekananthan, 1968; Wojciszke, Bazinska, & Jaworski, 1998), construal of others’ past actions (Wojciszke, 1994), and voters’ approval of political candidates in both the United States (Abelson et al., 1982; Kinder & Sears, 1981) and Poland (Wojciszke & Klusek, 1996). Developing impressions of leaders also involves the warmth and competence dimensions, including image management (building trust), relationship development (warmth), and resource deployment (competence and efficiency) (Chemers, 1997).

Further examination of past and present research reveals the extent to which humans use warmth and competence dimensions in navigating the social world. Peeters (1983) was one of the first to describe two independent dimensions at the trait level by defining self-profitability (competence, advantageous to the self) and other-profitability (warmth and morality, advantageous to others) in perceivers’ social domain.

Gender-based inequality is pervasive. Historically and cross-culturally, men have held more resources, power, and status than women. Despite general trends toward gender equality, male dominance remains a global reality. As of 2014, the global gender gap in economic participation and opportunity, which includes gender gaps in income, labor force participation, and professional advancement, stood at 60% (Hausmann, Tyson, Bekhouche, & Zahidi, 2014). If progress toward gender equality continues at the same pace, it will take until 2095 to completely close this gap. Yet in contrast to characterizations of intergroup relations as hostile and competitive, gender relations are predominantly cooperative – individual men and women consistently engage in and sustain close relationships with members of the other sex, whether friends, parents, siblings, or significant others. Herein lies the gender relationship paradox. How is the tension between male hegemony and male-female intimacy reconciled?

Ambivalent sexism theory (Glick & Fiske, 1996) recognizes that sexism entails a mixture of antipathy and subjective benevolence:

1. • Hostile sexism corresponds to classic definitions of prejudice as antipathy (Allport, 1954) and reflects the hostile derogation of women who pose a threat to the gender hierarchy (e.g., feminists).

2. • Benevolent sexism is “a set of interrelated attitudes toward women that are sexist in terms of viewing women stereotypically and in restricted roles but that are subjectively positive in feeling (for the perceiver)” (Glick & Fiske, 1996, p. 491). Benevolent sexism bestows affection on women who embrace limited but traditional gender roles (e.g., housewives). Hence, although benevolent sexism may appear positive, it presumes and reinforces women's subordinate status.

Ambivalent sexism theory argues that hostile and benevolent sexism are, in fact, not conflicting but complementary ideologies that present a resolution to the gender relationship paradox. By offering male protection and provision to women in exchange for their compliance, benevolent sexism recruits women as unwitting participants in their own subjugation, thereby obviating overt coercion. Hostile sexism serves to safeguard the status quo by punishing those who deviate from traditional gender roles.

This chapter discusses ambivalent sexism as a coordinated system of control that serves male dominance and limits women's power across personal, economic, and political domains. First, we review ambivalent sexism theory, focusing on ambivalent sexism's system-justifying functions. The second section addresses how ambivalent sexism polices women's bodies through the threat of rape, sexual harassment, and violence, as well as oppressive beauty ideals.