Virginie Bonnot

Université Paris Cité (formerly U. Paris Descartes)

Reactions to gender norm violations include social evaluations and behavioral responses to individuals who deviate from the gender norms associated with their perceived gender. Research has for a long time studied negative reactions, in many subdisciplines (Li & Wei, 2022; Lobel et al., 2004; Rudman, 1998), from different theoretical frameworks (Ia...

This study follows recent research which has called into question the ubiquity of the backlash effect by either failing to show that individuals sanction counter-stereotypical targets or by showing that they exhibit a preference for counter-stereotypical targets over targets who conform to gender stereotypes (Brenner et al., 2023; Meimoun et al., 2...

We created a novel instrument to assess individual orientations toward the neoliberal capitalist system, the Neoliberal Orientation Questionnaire (NOQ), which is comprised of four dimensions: competitiveness, individual self-regulation, relational detachment, and public divestment. The instrument was intended to complement existing scales by (a) ad...

Research on the backlash effect has long studied the social sanctions that individuals impose on those who do not conform to stereotypical expectations. Specifically, research has focused on reactions to gender stereotype violations. Studies have shown that adults, adolescents, and even children will sanction others when they fail to conform to gen...

« Garçon manqué », « Vraie fille », « Chochotte », « Mauviette », « Garçonne ». Toutes ces insultes résonnent dans les cours de récréation. Elles caractérisent un phénomène qui n’est pas nouveau : le harcèlement scolaire spécifiquement envers les jeunes qui ne se conforment pas aux attentes communiquées par les normes de genre traditionnelles. Il s...

Intensive mothering is a cultural model of appropriate childrearing according to which mothers should unselfishly make a tremendous investment in their child. Using a mixed methodology, we examined the relevance of this ideology to understand the persistence of gender inequality. A content analysis of the most popular French mommy blogs indicates t...

Intensive mothering (IM) defines appropriate child rearing as child-centered, labor-intensive and financially expensive (Hays, 1996). We consider the role of IM for social hierarchies, and suggest that IM is a judgement norm.

This poster presents two studies on the subject of the gender backlash effect against adolescents who do not conform to gender stereotypes. Through these two studies, adolescents were awarded lower adult social status when the were perceived as counter-stereotypical. Results also showed that masculine stereotypes were more associated with higher so...

This article adds to the existing literature on neoliberal ideology by investigating its content and contours in a context historically marked by statism. Very few studies in social psychology have looked at how neoliberal ideology transpires out of people's discourses and none have done so in such contexts. Yet, this appears necessary in order to...

The worldwide spread of a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) since December 2019 has posed a severe threat to individuals’ well-being. While the world at large is waiting that the released vaccines immunize most citizens, public health experts suggest that, in the meantime, it is only through behavior change that the spread of COVID-19 can be controlled....

The purpose of this paper is to test the main hypothesis that the endorsement of neoliberal ideology, comprising beliefs and values such as personal responsibility and hedonism, is negatively associated with the engagement in the Yellow Vest (YV) movement. In a first study (N = 489), analysis of qualitative data shows that most of the YV movement g...

Climate change is one of the main risks humanity faces this century. Numerous studies in social sciences show that people have a biased understanding of scientific knowledge regarding climate change and, consequently, do not adopt the good practices. We consider the concept of threat helpful to understand why this is so. Indeed, it integrates cogni...

Le lecteur ou la lectrice désireux·se de découvrir les travaux de psychologie sociale sur la question de la résistance au féminisme pourrait être quelque peu frustré·e face à la rareté des recherches publiées sur cette problématique spécifique. Si la psychologie sociale ne s'est pas encore emparée pleinement du sujet, il n'en reste pas moins que le...

Even though gender inequality is ubiquitous, not all women get involved in remedial collective action. We hypothesize that neoliberal ideology, which emphasizes individual responsibility, free choice, competition, and meritocracy, undermines women’s feminist identification and collective action. In the first experimental study (n=159), and consiste...

We examined how the framing of responsibility for reducing socio‐economic inequality affects individuals' emotional reactions towards the poor and the willingness to engage in prosocial actions. Attribution of responsibility to either the system (government and institutions), the less deprived in‐group, or the disadvantaged out‐group (poor) was mea...

Collective emotions are considered relevant factors in predicting pro-ecological behavior. However, the literature provides no insight into the role played by culture, despite the fact that emotions depend on specific appraisals, which are culturally grounded. As climate change is appraised as a political issue in France and as a moral issue in Ger...

Research based on system justification theory has shown that women's self-perceptions may be altered by the motivation to justify the system and its inequalities. Self-perceptions being built on past experiences, the present study aimed to explore how system justification motivation induced through a system dependency manipulation may alter both wo...

The present study examines how guilt norms regarding past French colonization in Algeria (one of the North African countries referred to as the Maghreb) are linked to collective guilt and other negative group-based emotions, contemporary intergroup attitudes towards immigrants of the former colonies and their descendants (French Maghrebians), and c...

Nous sommes tous les jours confrontés à bon nombre d’informations inquiétantes relatives à l’état de notre système social, politique ou économique : la crise économique (« Pourquoi la France ne survivra pas à la crise », NY Times 2013), l’accroissement des inégalités (« La crise creuse les inégalités en France », Le Figaro, 2014), la crise écologiq...

Menaces sociales et environnementales : Repenser la société des risques ---- Sabine Caillaud, Virginie Bonnot et Ewa Drozda-Senkowska (dir.) ---- Le monde est plein de dangers : crise économique, chômage, incivilités, délinquance, crimes, guerre et conflits, problèmes de santé publique, sécurité nucléaire, changements climatiques, extinction d’espè...

Article dans le magazine "Cerveau & Psycho"

Based on system justification theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994), we hypothesized that men and women would perform in accordance with gender stereotypes mainly when justification of the system is necessary. In this research, system-justification motivation was triggered using a system-dependency manipulation. Study 1 shows that when feeling highly (vs. l...

4e de couverture --- Qu'est-ce qu'être une femme ou un homme ? Ce que nous pensons «féminin» ou «masculin» l'est-il bien ? Est-ce conjoncturel, culturel, ou bien profondément inscrit dans nos corps et plus ou moins intangible ? Ces questions se posent de nos jours dans un contexte radicalement nouveau : celui de la remise en cause globale de la dom...

Fifty years after the end of the Algerian war of independence, French colonization in Algeria (1830-1962) is still a very controversial topic when sporadically brought to the forefront of the public sphere. One way to better understand current intergroup relationships between French of French origins and French with Algerian origins is to investiga...

This study explores the way groups cope with collective responsibility for ecological problems. The social representations approach was adopted, and the collective symbolic coping model was used as a frame of analysis, integrating collective emotions to enhance the understanding of coping processes. The original feature of this study is that the an...

The belief that, in school, success only depends on will and hard work is widespread in Western societies despite evidence showing that several factors other than merit explain school success, including group belonging (e.g., social class, gender). In the present paper, we argue that because merit is the only track for low status students to reach...

The last decades have seen striking progress in girls’ education and females are now doing as well as or better than males on numerous indicators. Paradoxically, the gender hierarchy in higher education remains. Indeed, female students, compared to male students, are still underrepresented in the fields of education leading to the more "profitable"...

At a time when teaching platforms are heavily introduced in French universities, this study aims to evaluating the way in which female and male students use information technology in general and teaching platforms in particular, taking into account the role that the gender stereotype, favoring boys in information technology, might play. A survey wa...

Based on system justification theory, we hypothesized that, when the salience of system justification concerns are high, both men and women would bias estimates of their own and their group's academic competence so as to make them more congruent with complementary gender stereotypes concerning mathematical and verbal abilities. Results show that, c...

Il existe différentes manières de considérer le caractère collectif des émotions. Dans ce chapitre, les émotions collectives, telle la peur, sont envisagées comme des émotions ressenties du fait de nos appartenances sociales. Eprouver la peur ou la colère lorsque les valeurs de notre groupe nous semblent menacées en est un exemple fréquent qui illu...

The existence of incompetence stereotypes of certain social groups may lead their group members to adopt behaviors that confirm their group’s negative reputation. Two dynamics are exposed to explain the deleterious impact of these stereotypes in the group members’ professional development: one relates to stereotype internalization, the other to ste...

Contrairement à la plupart des chapitres de cet ouvrage qui se focalisent sur la régulation des émotions dans un but intra-personnel (ex. préservation du bien-être et de la santé, maximisation de la performance au travail), la présente contribution est centrée sur le rôle des émotions et leur régulation dans les relations intergroupes. Nous proposo...

Stereotypes may influence performance of stereotyped individuals by means of stereotype internalization and/or by means of stereotype threatening situations. The present study investigated the joint influence of those mechanisms on women’s math performance, taking stereotype endorsement as a proxy for internalization. Results show that, congruent w...

It has long been argued that stigmatized individuals can ultimately internalize the stereotype alleging their inferiority. The present article investigated whether the internalization of the reputation of math inferiority that targets women can affect their math performance and whether this influence is caused by a disruption of working memory. A f...

Based on Eccles’ (1987) model of academic achievement-related decisions, we tested whether women, who are engaged in mathematical fields at university, have internalized, to some extent, the stereotype about women’s inferiority in math. The results indicate that men and women do not assess their ability self-concept, subjective value of math, or pe...

Les stéréotypes de genre qui attribuent des compétences intellectuelles différentes aux femmes et aux hommes sont rémanents et particulièrement utiles pour fonder les différences de statut social. En particulier, le stéréotype d'incompétence mathématique des femmes influence profondément leurs performances et leurs choix d'orientations scolaire et...