Influence Attempts When Competing Views Are Gender-Related: Sex as Credibility

A study was conducted to examine the effect of sex of subject, sex of majority and minority influence source, and male or female relatedness of the issue on conformity, Male and female subjects indicated their agreement (or disagreement) with male and female related statements following an influence attempt by either four male or four female confederates. The sex of the majority opinion was juxtaposed with a minority opinion held by an opposite-sexed confederate. Two major findings were obtained. First, for male related issues, subjects conformed more when the majority influence source was male than when female. Likewise, on female-related issues, subjects conformed more when the majority influence source was female than when male. Second, male subjects conformed more than female subjects on the female related issues whereas on male related issues they tended to conform less. The theoretical and practical significance of these findings is discussed.