Psychological differences between women and men, far from being invariant as a biological explanation would suggest, fluctuate in magnitude across cultures. Moreover, contrary to the implications of some theoretical perspectives, gender differences in personality, values, and emotions are not smaller, but larger, in American and European cultures, in which greater progress has been made toward gender equality. This research on gender differences in self-construals involving 950 participants from 5 nations/cultures (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States, and Malaysia) illustrates how variations in social comparison processes across cultures can explain why gender differences are stronger in Western cultures. Gender differences in the self are a product of self-stereotyping, which occurs when between-gender social comparisons are made. These social comparisons are more likely, and exert a greater impact, in Western nations. Both correlational and experimental evidence supports this explanation.
The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries (N = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower status, but there is variation across people and countries. The association between subjective status and perceived legitimacy was never negative at any levels of eight moderator variables, although the positive association was sometimes reduced. Although not always consistent with hypotheses, group identification, self-esteem, and beliefs in social mobility were all associated with perceived legitimacy among people who have low subjective status. These findings enrich our understanding of the relationship between social status and legitimacy.