Romantic attachment and ambivalent sexism in Spanish emerging adults: [póster en congreso]

Abstract

One of the main developmental tasks of Emerging Adulthoodis to look for a stable romantic relationships. The search for a romantic partner isaffected by social and personal valuesand characteristics, such as sexism or attachmentinternalworkingmodels.Ambivalent sexism includeshostile and benevolent sexism (Glick & Fiske, 2001). The first is based on prejudiced attitudes or discriminatory behaviors based on the supposed inferiority or difference of women as a group, and the second is a seemingly positive orientation of protection, idealization, and affection towards women, which also serves to justify their subordinate status regarding men. Levels of ambivalent sexism influence the ideals that young people have about how heterosexual relationships should be(Hammond& Overall, 2017; Lee, Fiske, Glick, & Chen, 2010, Travaglia, Overal., & Sibley, 2009).Moreover,interpersonal expectations are influenced by cognitive and effective modelsreflected in attachmentstyles. Therefore, beliefs about howwomen are(trustworthy, adversaryes or weak people) influence the way young people interact with their partners. Thus, anxiety and avoidance in romantic attachment havebeen related tohostil and benevolent sexism (Hart, Hung, Glick, & Dinero, 2012; Yakushko, 2005). The aim of this poster was to identify different groups of emerging adults based on their levels of ambivalent sexism (hostile and benevolent) and the dimensions of romantic attachment (anxiety and avoidance). To achieve this objective a cluster analysis was carried out on a sample composed by 1008 emerging adults: 755 undergraduate students(416 girls)and 253 emerging adults no undergraduate (119 girls). Preliminary analysis indicated thatthere are no significant differences between university students and non-university students in the levels of hostile and benevolent sexism, nor in the dimensions of anxiety and avoidance in romantic attachment. On the other hand,boys scoreshigher in the two dimensions of sexism and in avoidance romantic attachment than girls. There were no differences in anxiety romantic attachmentbetween boys and girls. The results showed asolution of three clusters: a group with scores above average in sexism (hostile and ambivalent) and anxiety romantic attachment and below in avoidance; asecond group with average scores in sexism, above average in avoidance and low scoresin anxiety; and a third group with low-average scores on sexism and anxiety and avoidance romantic attachment. These results are discussed from a gender perspective. We also discuss the impact that sexism has on our society, particularly in emerging adults.