Gender, Sexism, and Digital Distance: Hidden Forces Shaping Attachment – With Professor Nickola Overall

Professor Overall: We have very clear ideas about gender and gender roles. We’re socialized to see along gender lines from very early on, and children express these gender attitudes as well. We’ve learned very early that men are like this and women are like that, and that that relates to the way we operate in relationships.

Some of the core differences in what we think about men and women are about relational behavior. Who communicates and who withdraws? Who cares more? Who’s more invested? Who can express their emotions versus suppress them? And whose job is it to maintain the relationship?

These are really based on historical, traditional gender roles, where women were the caregivers and the caretakers, and men were the independent, agentic protectors and providers. Although that gender structure is changing, the attitudes and beliefs that we’ve been socialized into believing have not shown as much change.

We often think of sexist attitudes as those that are hostile and antagonistic in nature – the kind of manosphere-type attitudes, where women are taking over men’s power, and they should be at home, and they shouldn’t be in the workplace. Those attitudes do exist. They still exist across the world. They vary across nations depending on gender inequality, and they predict really important things in close relationships, such as physical aggression and power dynamics.¹

But what’s more interesting – and particularly relevant to attachment insecurity – is a set of gender attitudes called benevolent sexism. These are held more often by people high in attachment insecurity. Benevolent sexism is a set of attitudes that basically romanticizes traditional gender roles.

You can think of our attitudes about gender as being either trying to protect men’s power – the traditional power differentials between men and women, which is what hostile sexism is – or trying to figure out how men and women can work together and have good relationships despite there being structural gender inequalities. And that’s what benevolent sexism is.

Benevolent sexism romanticizes traditional gender roles by valuing the stereotypical traits of men and women. Women are valued because their empathy and warmth makes them great caregivers and great partners. Men are valued because they’re strong, and independent, and competent, and they will protect and provide for their family. Because of these different characteristics, men should also cherish their woman partner and the mother of their children. They should cherish, protect, and provide. And that provides a fulfilling life.

Think of it like the way your grandparents thought about men and women and relationships and families. You think those are old-fashioned attitudes – but actually, they persist. They haven’t declined that much, and both men and women endorse them, and it shapes how they approach intimate relationships.²

Professor Overall: One of the reasons why people agree with that depiction of men and women’s roles is because it provides them security in their relationships. It provides them a valued place in their relationship.

Women high in attachment anxiety, for example, are very attracted to benevolent sexism³ – those types of attitudes – because it means that they’re regarded as special. It signals that their man partner is likely to revere them, take care of them, and protect them. And it offers them power in their relationship.

Men high in attachment anxiety are also attracted to benevolent sexism, because it provides them a valued identity and a valued role. This is particularly true when people have children, when they’re managing different kinds of roles – work and family – and it provides them a kind of safe and secure way to be.

It can have those benefits. We’ve shown, for example, that for women high in attachment anxiety, when their partners are high in benevolent sexism, they feel more secure in their relationships, they’re happier in their relationships, and they’re less threatened during conflict.⁴ That’s because what benevolent sexism uniquely does is tell anxious people – anxious women in particular – that their partner is going to be there in the future no matter what, because they have to be. It’s their role. It doesn’t matter whether they’re happy or not with it.

So the need for safety and security in a relationship can mean that we adopt these types of attitudes that put men and women in boxes. That can help our relationship – but it can have wider consequences that enable gender inequality.

For women who endorse benevolent sexism, and men who endorse benevolent sexism, they’re less likely to focus on the woman’s own personal goals and accomplishments.⁵ They’re less likely to make decisions as a family that support women’s careers. They’re less likely to support policies and laws that protect women’s rights. Because in the safety and security of adhering to these roles, they’re not supporting shifts outside the relationship that would maintain – would shift – power and societal inequalities between men and women.

Professor Overall: The same processes would have occurred historically, because benevolent sexism exists while there is also hostile sexism. So it’s a kind of safe and protective way to be in an unequal context, because otherwise you’re exposed to more hostile attitudes toward women.

The question about whether these attitudes – and the links between anxiety and these attitudes – are changing now that we’re moving towards gender equality… I will say slowing, sometimes reversing. Progress towards gender equality across the world has been great, but actually it’s pretty much slowed and stalled. And in some cases, it’s reversing – some obvious cases.

But nonetheless, in Western nations at least, men and women – even when they’re having children – are usually dual earners in some capacity. This has just created more work for women on average, because women are still doing the majority of the caregiving and housework and emotional labor. So these types of attitudes are still attractive, because they provide a way of understanding why that situation is the case, and being happy with it.

I also think there are some interesting reactive effects. When there are changes in roles more generally, sometimes we hold on to those more rigid, traditional attitudes because they still are giving us safety in a changing world. And sometimes there’s a kind of reactivity against the change, so that we see spikes in benevolent sexism – and hostile sexism in particular – as there are shifts in the degree to which men and women are becoming more equal in society.

Professor Overall: It’s just like understanding that attachment anxiety and avoidance aren’t deficits. Yes, they have negative outcomes. But we need to also understand the reason why people agree with attitudes that we think are bad because they have bad outcomes, like reducing women’s rights or women’s career progression. Many men and women endorse attitudes that do that, but why?

Understanding what’s fundamentally driving the attitudes that we have is really important because it makes it personal and understandable about why people would agree with these types of attitudes. Because ultimately, what we’re doing all the time, every single day, is trying to find our secure, safe place in the world. And we do that primarily in our close relationships. Anything that allows us to experience that, we’ll move toward.

So changing those attitudes is not just about societal or structural changes. It’s also about thinking about ways men and women can also share power in relationships. Yes, we want to share power in society. We want to have the same rights, the same political representation, the same economic opportunities. But we also want to make sure that that means that both men and women have valued identities in their relationships that are also equal – and not based on their gender. That requires work from the bottom up, not just the top down.

Professor Overall: That’s a question we need to do a lot more work on. There’s a lot of work being done in the world by people other than me, finding important ways in which digital engagement impacts us in terms of our brains, our ability to sleep, our ability to engage with others.

I haven’t done research on that myself, but what I will say is this: digital worlds are just like any other world. We’re interacting in the digital space with the same needs and concerns. The way people high in attachment anxiety are going to use digital social media to remain connected is going to be very different than people high in attachment avoidance.

One of the issues with digital engagement is that it allows us to bypass some of the important ‘frictions’ that social interactions give us – frictions that actually enable us to move forward in our relationships, to resolve problems, to learn better how to regulate our emotions, to learn how to resolve conflict. Digital engagement can mean that we are avoiding those situations or our interactions aren’t actually creating these kinds of situations that we have to resolve. Therefore we’re not growing, or pushing, or deepening your relationship, or learning.

I also think that in digital life, we’re more able to express the less positive aspects of our insecurities – anonymously, and in harmful ways. If we understand that kind of hostility that occurs on social media as just expressions of the same kinds of insecurities that couldn’t be expressed in that way in person, it’s interesting. But again, that highlights that because there’s no repercussions, because there’s no responses, because the dyadic social interaction is not happening, it’s not shifting or improving who we are or how we relate to each other.

There are those missed opportunities. There is a danger of becoming a lot less able to do what we were hoping for – which is to figure out why we relate the way we do, and then respond in better ways to the way other people relate, and grow more cooperative, happy relationships. That becomes much more difficult if we’re having these online relationships that are either completely anonymous or just being kind of hindered or stalled through computer- or digitally-mediated communication.

In the home, our phones are a distraction just like anything else – like alcohol, like drugs, like TV – like any other thing that we would do to cope, instead of pushing ourselves to manage the stress and challenges that we have right in front of us. Everything is understandable when you consider, “Why are we doing this?” But because we’re so hooked in, we’re having less and less opportunity for the friction that would enable us to stop and figure out what we’re thinking, feeling, and how to respond and communicate better.

Professor Overall: I think so. One of the things that we don’t do when we’re growing up – when we’re teaching children in schools, when we’re discussing important issues politically, publicly – is we kind of leave relationships on the back burner. We just assume that they’re important and they’ll work themselves out.

But actually, in my view, relationships are where all the action is going to happen. And I don’t mean making policies that go backwards in terms of supporting “family roles and values” that are restrictive. I mean that there’s a constant recognition that actually our relationships are the most critical factor to human lives – to humans not just being healthy and happy, but also being able to cooperate in a happy, thriving society.

If we can really understand the way these relationship motivations are always driving our behavior and our experience every day – including the way we approach work, the kinds of societal attitudes we agree with, the policies that we’re more likely to support – because we’re just trying to be secure and safe in our relational context, whatever that context is – then that allows people to be more able to think more about themselves in that way, and what they can do about it.

That’s important, because really, all we’re doing all day is managing relationships with others. We talked a lot about couple relationships here, but the same processes occur in any kind of relationship. The same principles apply. If we can be aware of the way we respond in these kinds of relational dilemmas, and we can be compassionate about how and why others respond in the way they do, then we’re more likely to be able to interact in cooperative ways that enhance our own lives – but also of those around us.