Gender differences in two motivational pathways to political conservatism

Gender differences in strategic interests provide a theoretical framework to account for the heterogeneous landscape of gender differences in political preferences. Men's greater scores on social dominance orientation are consistent with a preference for social hierarchy, and women's greater scores on sexual disgust, a construct tapping aversions to sexually adventurous behavior, are consistent with a preference for restricted sexuality. We analyze how these psychological motives relate to political orientation (N = 757) and find that (a) there are indirect effects of gender on conservatism through social dominance orientation and sexual disgust, (b) there is a suppressor effect such that controlling for the indirect effect through sexual disgust leads the direct effect of gender to become substantially larger, (c) gender moderates the effect of sexual disgust on conservatism such that sexual disgust is a stronger predictor of conservatism among women, and (d) conservative moral foundations mediate the effect of sexual disgust on political conservatism.