How a Standardized Testing Motivates a Gendered Conservative Backlash

• In Event: The Political Psychology of Gender

Abstract

Women often do better than men academically. Looking at South Korea, we conduct an experiment to study whether this tendency drives a conservative backlash among young men. Compared to respondents who were not told their scores, revealing to men that they underperformed women on a standardized test led to an increase in conservative identification and support for the conservative political party. However, these same underperforming men were less likely to agree that they faced discrimination. Our results challenge canonical models of group threat, grievance, and political action: knowledge of comparative underperformance may lead to a recognition on the part of young men that gendered inequalities on standardized tests do not reflect unfair treatment but may nonetheless activate group threat and push men to seek redress in the form of support for conservative political movements.

Authors

• Soosun You, University of Pennsylvania

• Nicholas Kuipers, Princeton University