Men's Traditional Perceptions and Attitudes about Women: Correlates of Adjustment or Maladjustment

Responses to four items concerning perceptions of women workers, the fulfillment the family role gives women, discrimination against women, and attitude towards women's liberation are analyzed in relation to measures of personality and social adjustment in a representative national sample of 616 males. Traditional perceptions are correlated both with measures of adjustment and maladjustment. Negative attitude to women workers is associated with marital unhappiness, external locus of control, and low trustfulness in others. At the same time perception that women are primarily fulfilled in the family role and perception that women are not discriminated against show limited relationships with marital happiness and sense of competence at work. It is suggested that hostile, negative attitudes toward women who engage in non-traditional roles differ from attitudes which idealize the satisfaction of and absence of discrimination in women's traditional roles and reflect different personality dynamics. The former are relatively infrequent and correlate with maladjustment, while the latter enlist stronger support and are correlated with positive adjustment.