Ideology and gender: Observers system justification and targets gender as interactive predictors of citizenship expectations

We integrate system justification and social role theory to explain how observers system justification and target employees gender interact to predict observers expectations of targets sportsmanship citizenship behaviors. In contrast with social role theory predictions, observers did not expect greater levels of sportsmanship from women compared to men. Yet observers expected more sportsmanship from women (a) when observers were ideologically motivated by gender-specific beliefs (gender-specific system justification; Study 1) and (b) when system justification was cued experimentally (Study 2). A heretofore-unexamined aspect, observers ideology, modifies their expectations of sportsmanship citizenship across target genders. This has implications for system justification, social role, and organizational citizenship theoretical perspectives. ©