Do men ‘perform’ alternative gender ideologies depending on social context? A Social Performance Experiment

The overall aim of this project is to understand how young men’s beliefs about the appropriate behavior of each gender (hereafter ‘gender ideology’) are affected by social learning i.e. observing and imitating others, and the associated consequences of deviating from prevailing norms. In addressing this aim, our main objective is to: understand how young men’s gender ideology is influenced by a desire to conform with peers and/or adopt values of prestigious others. All data collection will take place in the summer of 2023 and within the boundaries of the Magu Health and Demographic Surveillance System (Magu HDSS), located in the Mwanza Region of northwest Tanzania. The project builds of prior research in the study community by the same research team (i) confirming variation in men’s support for women’s empowerment and (ii) suggesting that men’s self-reported beliefs are influenced by social desirability bias i.e. men often conceal their true opinion in order to portray themselves favorably to others (Lawson et al. 2021). The research will utilize mixed methods, and be comprised of quantitative and qualitative elements, to address our aims. A 'Social Performance Experiment' will be used to test if young men self-report differing beliefs depending on who is present during their survey. This preregistration is concerned with the Social Performance Experiment to answer the research question: Do men ‘perform’ alternative gender ideologies depending on social context? To evaluate the role of conformity and prestige-bias in shaping men’s gender ideology, we will use an experiment; randomly allocating participants into four conditions, with self-reported attitudes to women’s empowerment as the outcome. We anticipate that participants will ‘socially perform’ alternative gender ideologies depending on the social context in which they are questioned. First, we will compare men interviewed alone to those interviewed in peer groups. Conformity-bias is predicted to lead to relatively low support for women’s empowerment in the peer group condition. This prediction is grounded in our assumption that men mask emerging support for women’s empowerment in order to uphold traditional ideals of masculinity, leading to false perceptions that peers are relatively unsupportive of women’s empowerment. Supporting this hypothesis, we have also previously demonstrated that men tend to underestimate their peer’s support for women’s empowerment (publication currently under peer review), and field observations suggest men enact masculine stereotypes in social settings (e.g. making misogynistic jokes) at odds with more supportive privately expressed values (Lawson et al. 2021). Two other conditions will evaluate the role of prestige-bias. One group will be asked about their attitudes in front of local patriarchs (i.e. village elders), and the other in front of urban men (university educated, relatively wealthy). Patriarchs are predicted to encourage relatively low support for women’s empowerment; while urban men offer novel models of social prestige typically associated with more egalitarian values that encourage men to self-report greater support for women.