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TL;DR
Across varied contexts, participants were significantly more willing to accept instrumental harm to men than women, an asymmetry driven primarily by female participants.
Archives of Sexual Behavior · 3 authors, 3 centres
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Across varied contexts, participants were significantly more willing to accept instrumental harm to men than women, an asymmetry driven primarily by female participants.
Three pre-registered survey experiments with American MTurk and CloudResearch participants examined gender biases in the acceptance of instrumental harm (collateral damage) across utilitarian interventions. Study 1 used a workplace context, Study 2 employed a broader array of contexts, and Study 3 tested stereotypically female caregiving domains. All three studies found that people were more willing to endorse interventions inflicting instrumental harm onto men than women. In Studies 1 and 2, this asymmetry was driven primarily by female participants, whereas male participants showed a weaker or absent bias. In Study 3, both men and women endorsed harm to men over women, even in traditionally female sacrificial domains. Egalitarianism, feminism, and liberal political identification were associated with greater tolerance of harm to men.