Worth the Risk? Greater Acceptance of Instrumental Harm Befalling Men than Women

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TL;DR

This research investigates whether people are more willing to accept instrumental harm (collateral damage) when it befalls men rather than women across various social interventions. Across three experimental studies, participants consistently endorsed interventions more readily when men bore the costs than when women did, with this bias driven primarily by female participants. The findings suggest that gender-based asymmetries in harm tolerance persist even in caregiving contexts where women have traditionally been expected to sacrifice, with implications for policy-making and medical research equity.

Full summary

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**Background:** Utilitarian ethics permits inflicting harm on some individuals if it achieves a greater good, but moral judgments are often biased by irrelevant characteristics. Prior research using high-conflict sacrificial dilemmas (e.g., trolley problems) found people more willing to sacrifice men than women in life-or-death contexts. However, it remained unclear whether this bias extends to lower-level but consequential forms of instrumental harm (IH) in everyday social interventions. The authors hypothesized that people would more readily endorse interventions when IH befalls men than women (Hypothesis 1), that this asymmetry would be stronger among female participants (Hypothesis 2), and that the bias would be neutralized in stereotypically female caregiving contexts where women have historically been expected to sacrifice (Hypothesis 3).

**Methods:** Three experimental studies were conducted with American participants recruited via CloudResearch and Mechanical Turk. Study 1 (N=160, 67.1% men, mean age 34.5) used a between-subjects design where participants evaluated a workplace intervention reducing toxic behaviors by 36%, with either male or female employees experiencing IH (offense and poor psychological outcomes). IH acceptance was measured with a 6-item composite (α=0.92). Study 2 (N=233, 51% men, mean age 36.5) used a mixed design with five scenarios (chronic pain management, education, nutrition, psychological well-being, sexually transmitted infections) where gender of harmed/benefited groups was manipulated within-subjects. A 4-item IH acceptance composite was used (α=0.76). Control variables included baseline sacrifice endorsement, feminism (α=0.82), and egalitarianism (α=0.91). Study 3 (N=225, 61.7% men, mean age 35.1) tested the boundary condition using five stereotypically female caregiving contexts (parenthood, nursing, early childhood education, elderly care) with the same 4-item IH acceptance composite (α=0.73).

**Key Results:** Study 1: Participants were significantly more accepting of IH when men were harmed (M=4.51, SD=1.43) versus women (M=3.94, SD=1.44), t(155)=2.44, p=.016, d=0.39. A significant interaction emerged, F(1,151)=8.88, p=.003, partial η²=0.06: female participants showed lower acceptance of IH to women (M=3.10, SE=0.27) than men (M=4.64, SE=0.27, p=.001), while male participants showed no bias (p=.616). Perceptions of harm severity did not differ across conditions (p=.861). Study 2: The gender manipulation significantly predicted endorsement, b=-0.36, SE=0.09, t(232)=-4.12, p<.001, r=0.26, with stronger support for interventions helping women at men's cost. Participant gender significantly moderated this effect, b=0.40, SE=0.17, t(229)=2.43, p=.016, r=0.16: female participants showed significant bias (b=-0.54, SE=0.11, p<.001, r=0.30), male participants did not (b=-0.14, SE=0.13, p=.287, r=0.07). The main effect remained significant controlling for baseline sacrifice endorsement, egalitarianism, and feminist identification (all p<.001). Egalitarianism (b=-0.30, SE=0.08, p<.001, r=0.23) and feminist identification (b=-0.24, SE=0.06, p<.001, r=0.27) significantly moderated the gender manipulation. Study 3: A significant main effect of harmed target gender persisted even in caregiving contexts, b=0.25, SE=0.07, t(897)=3.76, p<.001, r=0.12, with greater endorsement of IH to men than women. Participant gender did not moderate this effect (p=.580), and feminist identification did not moderate it (p=.421). Political ideology showed a marginally significant moderating effect (p=.066): when men were harmed, more liberal participants supported interventions more strongly than conservatives (p=.048, r=0.13).

**Clinical Implications:** These findings reveal a systematic gender bias in how people evaluate interventions carrying collateral harm, with men consistently expected to bear greater costs than women across medical, psychological, educational, and caregiving contexts. This asymmetry may help explain historical patterns in medical research where women were excluded from exploratory studies due to aversion to harming them, ultimately resulting in treatments more effective for men than women. The bias was particularly pronounced among female participants and those endorsing egalitarian or feminist ideologies, suggesting that efforts to rectify historical injustices may paradoxically perpetuate gender disparities in research participation and intervention design. Policymakers and researchers should be aware of these biases when designing and evaluating interventions, as the short-term protection of women from harm may lead to long-term disadvantages in medical and social advancements.