Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI)

Abstract

The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI), developed by social psychologists Peter Glick and Susan T. Fiske in 1996, represents a transformative milestone in the measurement of gender prejudice. Departing from conventional conceptualizations of prejudice as exclusively antipathetic antipathy, the ASI operationalizes sexism as a multidimensional construct characterized by a profound ambivalence: the coexistence of Hostile Sexism (HS) and Benevolent Sexism (BS). Hostile sexism reflects overt antipathy, adversarial views of gender relations, and derogatory characterizations of women who challenge traditional male dominance. Conversely, benevolent sexism encompasses subjectively positive, chivalrous, yet deeply patronizing orientations toward women, positioning them as pure, fragile, and requiring male protection and romantic fulfillment. The inventory comprises self-report items administered on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 0 (Disagree strongly) to 5 (Agree strongly). Within the benevolent sexism domain, the instrument delineates three distinct yet interrelated subcomponents: Protective Paternalism (P), Complementary Gender Differentiation (G), and Heterosexual Intimacy (I). Psychometric evaluations across diverse cross-cultural cohorts—spanning dozens of nations and tens of thousands of participants—demonstrate robust internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha values typically ranging from .83 to .92 for Hostile Sexism and .73 to .92 for Benevolent Sexism), high test-retest reliability, and replicable structural validity confirmed via exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The ASI has proven indispensable for examining structural inequality, system justification, interpersonal relationships, organizational bias, and the insidious reinforcement of patriarchal systems worldwide.

Keywords

Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, Hostile Sexism, Benevolent Sexism, Gender Prejudice, Protective Paternalism, Complementary Gender Differentiation, Heterosexual Intimacy, System Justification Theory, Psychometrics, Social Dominance

Authors

The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory was originated and psychometrically established by:

• Peter Glick, Ph.D.: Henry Merritt Wriston Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Psychology at Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin. Dr. Glick is an internationally recognized authority on the social psychology of prejudice, stereotyping, and intergroup relations. Email: [email protected] / Lawrence University institutional directory.
• Susan T. Fiske, Ph.D.: Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Professor of Public Affairs at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. Renowned for foundational contributions to social cognition, the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), and power dynamics. Email: [email protected].

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory is to provide an empirical instrument capable of measuring the multifaceted, coordinated nature of gender prejudice. Prior to the mid-1990s, existing psychometric measures of gender-related attitudes—such as the Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS) or Modern Sexism Scale—primarily focused on overtly hostile, exclusionary, or traditionalist beliefs regarding women's civil, legal, and domestic rights. While these early instruments effectively captured explicit opposition to gender equality, they proved increasingly insensitive to the evolving, nuanced expressions of gender bias in egalitarian-normative societies.

Glick and Fiske addressed this theoretical and empirical limitation by proposing that prejudice toward women is uniquely shaped by two universal features of human social ecology: structural male dominance (patriarchy) and interpersonal heterosexual interdependence. Because men depend heavily on women as romantic partners, mothers, and caretakers, male hostility toward women cannot exist in isolation; it must be coupled with positive, prosocial, and reverential orientations that preserve male access to domestic and emotional fulfillment. Consequently, the ASI was developed to achieve the following aims:

• Measure overt antipathy and antagonistic hostility directed at women who violate traditional norms (Hostile Sexism).
• Measure patronizing, subjectively affectionate attitudes that reward women who conform to traditional subordinate roles (Benevolent Sexism).
• Disentangle how chivalrous ideology actively undermines female autonomy, career progression, and sociopolitical status under the guise of admiration.
• Provide a cross-culturally invariant diagnostic tool for clinical, organizational, legal, and academic investigations into modern gender dynamics.

In research contexts, the ASI enables social psychologists to investigate how institutional inequality is maintained not merely through explicit misogyny, but through the complementary interplay of reward and punishment. In organizational and applied settings, the instrument elucidates implicit obstacles to leadership, the evaluation of women in STEM disciplines, workplace discrimination cases, and juror decision-making in sexual assault and domestic violence litigation.

Psychological Construct

The core construct assessed by the ASI is Ambivalent Sexism, defined as a system of interlocking attitudes that treat women as both adversaries to be resisted and treasures to be protected, depending on their conformity to prescribed societal roles. The construct bifurcates into two distinct ideological dimensions:

1. Hostile Sexism (HS)

Hostile Sexism corresponds to classical prejudice, reflecting an overtly negative, resentful, and antagonistic attitude toward women. Grounded in the preservation of male hegemony, HS views women through three primary lenses:

• Dominative Paternalism: The conviction that men ought to retain ultimate authority, control, and governance over domestic, professional, and political domains, viewing women as fundamentally incapable of wielding legitimate executive power.
• Derogatory Stereotyping & Resentment: Beliefs that women are manipulative, oversensitive, deceitful, and prone to using their sexuality or allegations of discrimination to extract unearned advantages over men.
• Heterosexual Hostility: Fear and resentment regarding female sexual gatekeeping, manifested in beliefs that women seek to entrap men into romantic commitments to control them.

2. Benevolent Sexism (BS)

Benevolent Sexism represents an affectively positive, subjectively affectionate, but ideologically restrictive stance. It idealizes women in traditional feminine archetypes (e.g., wife, mother, homemaker) while implicitly infantilizing them and restricting their agency. Benevolent sexism is structured into three correlated subfactors:

• Protective Paternalism (P): The belief that men have an obligation to provide for, protect, and shield women from harm, implying that women are inherently fragile, vulnerable, and dependent upon male agency for their safety and welfare.
• Complementary Gender Differentiation (G): The romanticized belief that women possess unique, refined qualities—such as superior moral purity, empathy, and artistic sensibility—that men lack, framing women's virtues as passive, emotional, and domestic complements to male competence.
• Heterosexual Intimacy (I): The conviction that a man cannot achieve psychological completeness or true happiness without the romantic love and emotional sustenance of a woman, placing women on an emotional pedestal while reinforcing compulsory heteronormativity.

Theoretical Framework

The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory is grounded in Ambivalent Sexism Theory (AST; Glick & Fiske, 1996, 2001), which synthesizes insights from Social Role Theory, System Justification Theory, and intergroup power dynamics. Unlike standard intergroup conflicts where dominant groups feel unmitigated antipathy toward outgroups (e.g., racial prejudice), gender relations are uniquely governed by deep dyadic interdependence.

According to AST, patriarchal systems employ a sophisticated "carrot-and-stick" regulatory mechanism to sustain structural hierarchy:

• The Carrot (Benevolent Sexism): Rewards women who adhere to traditional, subordinate, and nurturing roles with high interpersonal affection, social protection, and domestic veneration.
• The Stick (Hostile Sexism): Punishes women who challenge patriarchal power, compete with men in professional spaces, or assert sexual autonomy (e.g., feminists, female executives, non-traditional women).

This ideological complementarity ensures that women are actively divided against one another—separating the "good" women (deserving of benevolent protection) from the "bad" women (justifying hostile retaliation). Furthermore, John Jost's System Justification Theory highlights that benevolent sexism functions as an exceptionally potent palliative ideology: because it feels flattering and morally elevated, women frequently endorse benevolent sexism themselves, unwittingly legitimizing male dominance and undermining their own collective resistance against institutional subordination.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the ASI has been corroborated across hundreds of empirical studies spanning psychological, organizational, and cross-cultural domains:

Construct and Convergent Validity

Hostile Sexism demonstrates robust positive correlations with external measures of authoritarianism and prejudice, including the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale (RWA), the Social Dominance Orientation Scale (SDO), the Old-Fashioned Sexism Scale, and the Modern Sexism Scale. Benevolent Sexism correlates moderately with HS (typically r = .30 to .50), reflecting that while they represent distinct dimensions, they function as complementary arms of an overarching sexist ideology.

Discriminant Validity

Despite their shared grounding in gender differentiation, HS and BS consistently display divergent relationships with personality traits and behavioral outcomes. For instance, while HS correlates negatively with measures of empathy and interpersonal warmth, BS correlates positively with empathy, chivalrous prosocial intentions, and traditional religiosity. Furthermore, factor analyses routinely reveal that items loaded onto HS and BS load cleanly onto distinct orthogonal or obliquely correlated latent constructs, preventing psychometric conflation.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

The predictive power of the ASI has been demonstrated in multiple behavioral paradigms:

• Victim Blaming and Sexual Violence: High scores on Hostile Sexism strongly predict adherence to rape myths, tolerance of domestic violence, and victim-blaming in acquaintance rape scenarios. Benevolent Sexism uniquely predicts victim-blaming when women violate traditional modesty or behavioral norms (e.g., entering vulnerable settings unaccompanied).
• Workplace Discrimination: Benevolent Sexism predicts organizational decisions that patronize women—such as withholding challenging, career-advancing assignments from female employees under the pretext of "protecting" them from stress.
• Cross-National Parity: In Glick et al.'s (2000) landmark 19-nation study (N = 15,000+), national averages of HS and BS strongly predicted national indexes of gender inequality (e.g., the United Nations Gender Empowerment Measure and Gender-Related Development Index), demonstrating that high BS scores within a nation correlate with suppressed female economic and political participation.

Reliability

The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory consistently demonstrates outstanding internal consistency and temporal stability across diverse populations and languages:

• Internal Consistency: In original validation studies by Glick and Fiske (1996), Cronbach's alpha coefficients for Hostile Sexism ranged from .83 to .92 across six independent American samples. Benevolent Sexism yielded alpha coefficients ranging from .73 to .92. Across international adaptations in Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East, HS reliability values typically remain above .85, while BS reliability coefficients consistently range between .75 and .88.
• Subscale Reliabilities: The three subscales of Benevolent Sexism demonstrate acceptable internal consistency, with typical alphas averaging .70 to .80 for Protective Paternalism, .65 to .75 for Complementary Gender Differentiation, and .60 to .75 for Heterosexual Intimacy.
• Test-Retest Stability: Longitudinal research confirms high temporal stability over multi-month intervals, with test-retest correlation coefficients routinely exceeding r = .80 for Hostile Sexism and r = .75 for Benevolent Sexism, confirming that the ASI assesses enduring ideological orientations rather than transient situational states.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the ASI has been validated using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA):

Exploratory Factor Analysis

Initial principal axis factoring with oblimin (oblique) rotation conducted by Glick and Fiske (1996) reliably extracted two major factors accounting for the majority of common variance, representing Hostile Sexism and Benevolent Sexism. Within the Benevolent Sexism items, secondary factor analyses consistently identified three sub-dimensions: Protective Paternalism (P), Complementary Gender Differentiation (G), and Heterosexual Intimacy (I).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Subsequent structural modeling has established that a hierarchical (second-order) model best accounts for the data across populations. In this model:

• Hostile Sexism serves as a single, coherent latent factor directly manifesting through its constituent items.
• Benevolent Sexism serves as a higher-order latent factor that accounts for the correlations among three lower-order latent factors: Protective Paternalism, Complementary Gender Differentiation, and Heterosexual Intimacy.
• Hostile Sexism and the higher-order Benevolent Sexism factor maintain a positive covariance (ranging between .30 and .55 in most industrial and non-industrial nations).

Standard goodness-of-fit indices across multinational cross-validation investigations confirm robust structural adequacy: Comparative Fit Index (CFI) > .90, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) > .90, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) < .055, and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) < .06.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Construct Measured: Ambivalent sexism (Hostile Sexism and Benevolent Sexism, including sub-dimensions of Protective Paternalism, Complementary Gender Differentiation, and Heterosexual Intimacy).
• Administration Format: Self-report paper-and-pencil or computerized questionnaire.
• Item Count: 21 authentic questionnaire items (in the standard provided operational inventory).
• Response Scale: 6-point Likert scale:
  • 0 = Disagree strongly
  • 1 = Disagree somewhat
  • 2 = Disagree slightly
  • 3 = Agree slightly
  • 4 = Agree somewhat
  • 5 = Agree strongly
• Reverse-Scored Items: Items 3, 6, 7, 13, 18, and 21 (as indexed in standard source scoring keys; reverse using: Recoded Score = 5 – Original Score).
• Scoring Procedure:
  • Hostile Sexism (HS) Score: Calculated by averaging the scores of items: 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18, and 21 (accounting for item recoding).
  • Benevolent Sexism (BS) Score: Calculated by averaging the scores of items: 1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 17, 19, 20, and 22 (accounting for item recoding in full 22-item instruments; in this 21-item format, compute mean across all designated BS items).
  • Individual subscale scores for Protective Paternalism (P), Complementary Gender Differentiation (G), and Heterosexual Intimacy (I) can be derived by averaging their respective indicators.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Publication Year: 1996 (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology).
• Copyright & Ownership: Copyright © 1996 by the American Psychological Association (APA). Developed by Peter Glick and Susan T. Fiske.
• Licensing and Research Availability: The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory is widely accessible and free of charge for non-commercial academic, educational, and psychological research purposes. Authors have made the inventory publicly available for empirical study. Commercial applications, widespread redistribution, or inclusion within proprietary diagnostic tools require licensing authorization from the copyright holders and the APA.

References

• Fiske, S. T. (2000). Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination at the seam between the centuries: Evolution, culture, mind, and brain. European Journal of Social Psychology, 30(3), 299–322. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-386915-9.00024-3
• Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (1996). The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating hostile and benevolent sexism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(3), 491–512. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.3.491
• Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (2001). Ambivalent sexism. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 33, pp. 115–188). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(01)80005-8
• Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (2011). Ambivalent sexism revisited. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 35(3), 530–535. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684311414832
• Glick, P., Fiske, S. T., Mladinic, A., Saiz, J. L., Wang, W. L., de Motte, J. M., … & López, W. L. (2000). Beyond prejudice as simple antipathy: Hostile and benevolent sexism across 19 nations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 763–775. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.763

Items of the Scale