Are sisters doing it for themselves? Feminists’ concern for issues that affect women and men

When marginalised groups such as women organise to demand better conditions, social psychological representations of collective action can paint different pictures of their motivations, with some emphasising ingroup-focus and competition and others suggesting a more universalistic, justice-led approach. With this in mind, across two studies, we compared feminists’ and non-feminists’ concern for men and women, their views of gender relations, and meta-perceptions of these attitudes. In both Study 1 (n = 348) and Study 2 (n = 283), feminists’ concerns for the social issues that they thought faced men and women were positively related, consistent with positive-sum beliefs about the interests of men and women. Feminists rated the issues facing men as no less important (Study 1), or more important (Study 2), than non-feminist participants did. Analyses of participants’ metaperceptions (beliefs about feminists’ attitudes) revealed that in both studies, participants underestimated feminists’ concern for men, and also tacitly underestimated the positive-sum relationship between attitudes to men and women. The findings of findings of Study 2 indicated that these errors were especially pronounced among participants high in hostile sexism and social dominance orientation. Overall, feminists express genuine concern for men and reject zero-sum thinking, but these attitudes are generally underestimated in meta-perceptions. These findings paint a multi-faceted picture of feminists’ real and perceived attitudes towards men, contributing to our social psychological understanding of intergroup relations and suggesting that minority groups need not always be motivated by zero-sum thinking.