Accuracy of consensual stereotypes in moral foundations: A gender analysis.

The current study explored the accuracy of consensual moral stereotypes that women and men hold about each other, as well as whether the gender differences in morality found in previous literature replicate on a sample of Pakistani individuals. A sample of 300 was used with an equal number of men and women. Data from 50 of the respondents was collected online, whereas the rest was collected in person from universities. The 30-item Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ30) was used as a measure of five Moral Foundations, which are the basic elements of moral psychology as posited by Moral Foundations Theory. Men and women answered the questionnaire for themselves and then a second time, according to their perception of how a typical member of the other gender would respond which gave a measure of their stereotype. Comparison of actual scores of men and women revealed a statistically significant difference where women scored higher than men on the Harm foundation (p = 0.001). All other foundations, except for the Authority foundation showed the same pattern of differences as the previous literature, although they did not reach statistical significance. Stereotypes about men held by women were inaccurate underestimations on the Harm and Fairness foundations. The stereotype about women, held by men, was accurate on the Fairness foundation and inaccurate on the Authority foundation in the direction of underestimation. This research serves to further the study of Moral Foundations Theory as well as exploring the reasons behind the inaccurate moral stereotypes that men and women hold about each other, and actual gender differences in morality.

Introduction

Psychological literature has generally considered inaccuracies and exaggerations as an inherent attribute of stereotypes [1] [2] [3]. However there are some serious problems with such a perspective, as mentioned in [4], because of which a general definition of stereotypes as “beliefs about the attributes of social groups” is proposed. This is in line with research that does not make inaccuracy a part of the definition on stereotypes [5]. A distinction can also be drawn between stereotypes held by a group and an individual: “Consensual stereotypes” are stereotypes shared by the members of a group, and are usually measured by means of samples, whereas, “personal stereotypes” are stereotypes held by an individual [6].

In keeping with this perspective, consensual stereotype accuracy (referred to as “stereotype accuracy” in the rest of this article) can be understood as the degree of correspondence between beliefs about groups and the actual characteristics of those groups [7]. This would involve assessing people’s descriptive beliefs about groups, measuring the actual relevant characteristics of those groups (criteria), and then comparing beliefs to criteria. In this sense, stereotype accuracy has been noted to be one of the largest and most replicable effects in social psychology [6] [7]. Although, not all stereotypes are accurate, such as political stereotypes [5] [8] and national character stereotypes [9], there is considerable evidence for accuracy in many stereotypes [10] [11] [12].

Stereotypes about gender are not an exception to this pattern, as a review by Jussim in 2017 [4], of research on gender stereotypes, shows that most consensual stereotype judgments were accurate and most studies were dominated by accurate and near miss judgements with no evidence for the hypothesis that stereotypes generally cause exaggerations in real differences. In fact, underestimation of differences was also present [13] [14] [15]. Löckenhoff, et al., [16] found, from a sample of 3,323 individuals across 26 nations that consensual stereotypes about gender differences (perceived gender differences) on the Five Factor Model of personality mapped on well to actual assessed sex differences in personality.

Of the many types of stereotypes people can hold, one is that of “moral stereotypes” which can be understood as “beliefs about the morality of a social group”. A review of the literature revealed only one publication in which Graham, Nosek, and Haidt [8], explored the consensual moral stereotypes that American liberals and conservatives have of each other. The researchers used the MFQ (Moral Foundations Questionnaire) that was constructed to measure five aspects or “foundations” of moral psychology (Harm, Fairness, In-group, Authority and Purity). They looked at how liberals and conservatives would rate endorsement of these five moral foundations for: themselves; a “typical” member of their own group and a “typical” member of the other group on the questionnaire. These ratings of a “typical” member of a group were called “moral stereotype” scores which were used to quantify moral stereotypes and subsequently consensual stereotypes. Consensual stereotypes, in this case, were found to be exaggerations of actual endorsement of moral foundations.

Evidence on moral stereotypes across genders is rare. A study [17] on women’s implicit stereotypes revealed that, on average, men were considered to be more capable at violence whereas women were considered to be more competent, sociable and trustworthy than men. The authors note that no evidence could be found that these beliefs were harmful for women in terms of legitimizing their societal disadvantages, and that instead, they can be seen as serving the purpose of bolstering positive evaluations by women of their gender in-group. Another study [18] looked at how attractive women tend to be perceived as less truthful than their less attractive counterparts (dubbed the “femme fatale effect”). The results of six experiments suggested that, when delivering news of organizational change, this effect held for perceptions about women but not men. Furthermore, the effect persisted regardless of contextual changes such as whether the news being delivered was positive or negative, or whether the context was masculine or feminine. The researchers further argued that since this effect was eliminated when participants were primed to feel sexually secure, but not generally secure or sexually insecure, it could be understood as being rooted in sexual insecurity to some extent. Differing perspectives on gender also seem to come into play during evaluation of job candidates. One study [19] found that competence played a central role in the evaluation of both male and female job candidates, however, women were evaluated against even more criteria and their shortcomings were also more influential on their evaluations. The authors attribute this difference in evaluation strategies to the decision makers’ belief that, compared to men, women would be more likely to encounter obstacles such as difficulties in being accepted and respected in the work place (especially by men). Another possible explanation offered by the authors was that the evaluators might be concerned about the long term commitment of female candidates for their possible future decisions such as deciding to have a child.

Literature also indicates the presence of differences in morality across genders such as women being more likely to employ predominantly care oriented rather than justice-oriented considerations in moral dilemmas [20]. Women have also been noted to be more consistent in their use of care orientation and men have been noted more consistent in their use of justice orientation [21]. Graham, et al. [22], using their Moral foundations Questionnaire (MFQ), found that women, on average, scored greater than men on measures of care, fairness and purity; whereas men, on average, scored slightly greater than women on measures of authority and ingroup loyalty. A study [23] looking at gender differences in lying behavior found no clear evidence of differences in lying on an individual level; however on a group level more lying was noted in male and mixed groups than in female groups. Gender differences [24] have also been noted in ethical decision making where results of a meta-analysis revealed that, compared to men, women are more likely to consider specific business practices as unethical, however this difference declines as work experience increases.

Any discussion on morality must also involve cultural considerations because, in spite of there being certain commonalities in what is considered moral in multiple cultures such as honesty [25], it has been well documented how differences in culture are associated with differences in morality within and across societies [26]. One such example is of how Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies value individual autonomy and rights to a greater extent than non-WEIRD societies, which tend to prioritize community and spiritual purity [22]. There is no reason to assume that Pakistan is an exception to this rule and the moral profile of Pakistan should be studied with consideration to its cultural context. Applying Hofstede’s [27][28] framework of cultural dimensions to Pakistani society indicates:

Pakistan’s relatively high collectivist orientation, high propensity toward uncertainty avoidance, high power distance and masculinity largely account for many traditions and practices including strict adherence to hierarchy, centralization, corruption, nepotism and gender differentiation in administrative roles [29].

Indeed, gender segregation and male dominance can be noted in different mediums in Pakistan including public sector school textbooks [30], and has been a cause of diffuclty for women in the work place. The family structure is also typically hierarchical with strict roles defined in terms of age and gender, prioritizing the interrelatedness of family members as opposed to individual autonomy [31]. Religion being one of the strongest cultural influences on morality [32] must also not be ignored: the vast majority of Pakistanis are Muslims and Islamic ideology has been a central part of Pakistani constitution [33], leading to a conflict of views on gender rights and relations between traditionalists and institutions more sensitive to women’s issues [34]. In keeping with these and a myriad of other cultural considerations, it would make sense to assume that the stereotypes held by Pakistanis, and their accuracy, would also be influenced by Pakistan’s culture.

The morality literature has immensely focused on the gender differences with reference to moral judgments and how the two genders respond to moral dilemmas. The debate dates back to the end of the last century, with opposing views of Kohlberg & Gilligan about moral development and decision making in men and women [35]. According to Gilligan, women usually get stuck at earlier levels of this development, while men quite often move upward to abstract principles of morality. A lot of later empirical work has focused on investigating actual gender differences in moral decision-making and found differing results. While some found a statistically significant difference in moral decision-making between women and men [36], others did not [37]. A more recent meta-analysis conducted on 470 experimental studies indicated that cheating and dishonest behavior is more prevalent in men than in women [38]. The literature also reveals that gender-related differences in moral judgment influence responses to dilemmas with emotionally salient actions. Men make pragmatic choices regardless of putting others at risk of danger or harm as compared to women [39].

These findings may be connected to the gender-differences in empathic ability [40][41] that make females more resistant to decisions that, despite being rationally viable, entail directly inflicting physical or moral pain to other individuals. Hence, female moral reasoning seems directed towards avoiding harming other people, and giving more priority to social relationships. Conversely, male moral thought hinges on the abstract principles of justice and fairness and on an individualistic stance [42].

The current research utilizes Moral Foundations Theory or “MFT” [43] as a framework from which to view morality. MFT tries to explain moral psychology by proposing multiple “basic” and “irreducible” foundations of moral thinking, grounded in evolutionary psychology, social psychology and anthropology. These “moral foundations” can be viewed as cognitive modules that detect relevant patterns in the environment and respond to them; with different people valuing these foundations to different extents, resulting in different moral systems and ideologies around the world.

Haidt and Joseph [44] identified five best candidates for these foundations: Care/Harm, which relates to recognizing signs of suffering and distress of people in general; Fairness/Cheating which relates to recognizing opportunities for mutual benefit and violations of agreements such as cheating in a game, or even improper functioning of inanimate objects such as a soda machine not working when you put in a dollar; Loyalty/Betrayal which relates to recognizing whether a person is acting in solidarity with or against a group they belong to; Authority/Subversion which relates to recognizing signs of obedience and deference in people; and Purity/Degradation which relates to recognizing signs of sacredness and impurity within a cultural context. It must be noted that these are by no means the only basic aspects of moral psychology, there may be more [22] but current research provides the most evidence in favor of these five foundations.

Exploring morality and related stereotypes across genders seems all the more important in light of recent movements against sexual harassment such as the “#MeToo” movement that quickly spread internationally through social media [45]. This movement gave greater impetus to the talk about sexual harassment and ethics [46] and even had an impact in Pakistan, with a sudden rise in allegations directed against prominent people [47]. Under such circumstances, it seems relevant to investiagate the beliefs about morality that men and women have of each other. Given the topic’s contemporary relevance and the rare evidence on moral stereotypes and gender, the current research aims at examining this gap in the literature.

Moreover, as many aspects of morality do vary across cultures, the current study with its use of data from exclusively pakistani citizens, should serve to shed light on any culturally variable aspects of gender differences in moral foundations. It should also be a useful addition to the cross cultural examination of moral stereotypes as the results can be compared to any future research done on moral stereotypes across gender.

This research is primarily concerned with the accuracy of consensual stereotypes about morality, across genders i.e. the accuracy of stereotypes that women have about men and vice versa; with the population under consideration being Pakistani. It was also hypothesized that, as seen in Graham, et al. [22], women would show greater endorsement for Harm, Fairness and Purity foundations, whereas men wouldshow greater endorsement for Loyalty and Authority foundations.

The methodology is inspired by Graham, Nosek and Haidt [8] where the 30 item Moral Foundations Questionnaire was employed to study morality, and stereotypes about morality, with respect to the five moral foundations. They used a seven point scale ranging from exremely conservative to exteremely liberal for people to identify their political affiliation. Participants were then asked to rate endorsement of the five moral foundations for: themselves; a “typical” member of their own group and a “typical” member of the other group on the questionnaire. The ratings of a “typical” member of a group were used to measure consensual moral stereotypes which were then compared to actual scores of extreme conservatives and extreme liberals. The reason for this was that scores from the extreme ends of the political spectrum would likely not be representative of the general population, so any stereotype scores equal to or greater than these would qualify as exaggerations. Scores from a nationally representative sample were also used as a benchmark of comparision.

The current study, utilizes a similar framework in its use of the Moral Foundation Questionnaire to measure morality and moral stereotypes, however, a nationally representative sample of the moral foundation scores of men and women was not available due to time constraints. It would also not make sense to measure the variable of gender on a scale with “extremes”. Additionally, as it would already take time to fill the questionnaire once for onself and again for the other gender, providing additional scores for one’s own gender would take too long and possibly lead to participant attrition. Therefore, inkeeping with the above considerations, it was decided that each participant would fill the questionnaire only twice to report two types of scores: actual scores for oneself, and stereotype scores about the other gender. The actual scores of each gender, aside from being compared to one another, would also be used as a criterion to which stereotype scores from the opposite gender would be compared for measuring accuracy.

Methods

Sample

A sample of 300 participants was collected, with an equal number of men and women. The men had a median age of 21 (IQR = 4) with a median of 14 (IQR = 3) years of education completed. The women also had a median age of 21 (IQR = 4) with a median of 15 (IQR = 2) years of education completed. Data from 50 of the respondents was from the online questionnaire whereas the rest was collected in person from universities.

The inclusion criteria restricted the sample to Pakistani citizens of age 18 and above, who identified as men or women, with a minimum of 12 years of education and ability to read, understand and write English. Purposive sampling was employed and data was collected both in person and through an online survey using google forms.

Materials

The English version of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire by Graham, et al., [22] (referred to as MFQ30) was used, which is a 30 item, close-ended questionnaire that was last revised in July 2008 and is freely available at moralfoundations.org. The MFQ30 gives the mean score for endorsement of each foundation by an individual.

MFQ30 is composed of two parts, each with 15 items and 1 catch item. The first part called “moral relevance” is for measuring expicit thoughts about what is morally relevant with items rated on a 6 point likert scale from 0 (not at all relevant) to 5 (extremely relevant). The second part “moral judgement” is for assessing actual use of a moral foundation in judgement, which includes a 6 point likert scale from 0 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

Graham et al. [22] has previously reported alpha coefficients for each of the subscales as follows: Harm (0.69), Fairness (0.65), Ingroup (0.71), Authority (0.74) and Purity (0.84).

Since each participant completed two questionnaires, one of which they rated for themselves and the other for a typical member of the opposite gender, additions were made to the MFQ30 in terms of demographic questions asking about gender (men or women), age and years of education completed. Consensual stereotype held by a gender for each foundation was measured by averaging the predicted MFQ30 scores (about the opposite gender) on that foundation, from all the people of a gender. To gauge the accuracy of predictions about the opposite gender, we needed a standard of comparison. The most obvious comparison data were the actual ratings (average score for each foundation) provided by both genders in our sample, when they were asked to answer as themselves. Stereotype accuracy was measured for each foundation using discrepancy scores [6] of difference between consensual stereotype and a gender’s actual score on that foundation.

In line with benchmarks proposed by Jussim [4], discrepancy scores at, and within, 10% or 0.25 standard deviations (SDs) of criteria considered accurate; scores more than 10% or 0.25 SDs off but at, or within, 20% or 0.50 SDs considered moderately accurate; and scores greater than 20% or 0.50 SDs inaccurate. Jussim [4] also mentions that these standards are useful for practical purposes but are ultimately arbitrary and a different standard can be used depending on certain purposes.

Procedure

The current study was approved by Departmental Ethics Review Committee, Department of Humanities, COMSATS University Islamabad. The questionnaires were given to each participant along with an informed consent form, which can be found in S1 Appendix A. Each participant completed two sets of the MFQ. They filled out the standard MFQ for themselves and then the stereotype MFQ according to their perception of how a typical member of the opposite gender would respond. In doing so, they answered a total of 60 items.

Data was collected both in person and online. For online data collection, “google forms” was used to obtain data from participants who filled a duplicate of the questionnaires used in the study. To improve transparency of the data, all online participants had to sign in using their google email and were asked to leave their email as an optional choice. Written informed consent was taken to record their willingness.

Analysis scheme

The syntax provided at moralfoundations.org was used for computing mean score of a foundation for each person, which was then used to calculate the mean score of all people of a gender. A bootstrapped Welch’s t-test [48] was used for testing the hypothesis about differences in group mean in the population. Welch’s t-test was preferred over the Student’s t-test as it performs better in the context of psychological research [49], specifically with regard to the violation of the homogeneity of variance assumption.

15 tests (3 per foundation) were done to study group differences in order to make inferences about the target population. For each foundation:

a significance test was done to calculate difference in “endorsement by gender”

a significance test was done to calculate the difference between “endorsement by gender” of men and “consensual stereotype” about men

a significance test was done to calculate the difference between “endorsement by gender” of women and “consensual stereotype” about women

The alpha level chosen was 0.05. However, since multiple tests on the same data inflate type-1 error [50], the Bonferroni correction was used to control for family wise error rate. This was done by dividing the alpha by number of comparisons to give the adjusted alpha. For the current study, this was the alpha (0.05) divided by number of comparisons (15), which gives an adjusted alpha of 0.00333… that was rounded to 0.003 for use in significance tests.

Results

Table 1 shows the alpha co-efficient and skewness of all subscales comprising the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (30 item version). The table shows low to medium internal consistency for all scales.

Table 1

Descriptive statistics and alpha coefficients of each subscale (N = 300).

Variable	No. of Items	M	SD	Α	Range		Skew
					Potential	Actual
MFQ30
Harm Subscale	6	3.91	0.69	.53	0–5	0.83–5	-0.95
Fairness Subscale	6	3.92	0.58	.43	0–5	1.83–5	-.066
Ingroup subscale	6	3.24	0.79	.50	0–5	1–5	-0.62
Authority Subscale	6	3.40	0.63	.41	0–5	1.17–4.67	-0.62
Purity Subscale	6	3.57	0.75	.58	0–5	1–5	-0.70

MFQ30 = Moral Foundations Questionnaire (30 item version). Mean, Standard Deviation Ranges and skew reported for aggregate (mean) score of each person on the scale.

Analysis revealed statistically significant differences at the corrected alpha level. Women scored higher than men on the Care foundation, and the stereotypes they held about men were inaccurate, with men scoring higher than the stereotypes about them. Women also scored higher than the stereotypes about them, which were accurate, though this difference was not statistically significant (Table 2).

Table 2

Comparison of gender on actual and stereotype scores on harm subscale (N = 300).

	Men (n = 150)	Women (n = 150)		95% Bootstrapped Cl		Cohen’s ds
Harm Subscale	M(SD)	M(SD)	t(298)	LL	UL
Actual Scores	3.71(0.76)	4.11(0.54)	5.25*	0.26	0.53	0.61
MA vs SAM	3.71(0.76)	3.16(0.96)	5.57*	0.37	0.75	0.64
WA vs SAW	4.03(0.77)	4.11(0.54)	1.08	- 0.05	0.23	0.13

MA = Men Actual, SAM = Stereotype About Men, WA = Women Actual, SAW = Stereotype About Women, CI = Confidence Interval; LL = Lower Limit; UL = Upper Limit

*p< .003

The results revealed statistically significant differences at the corrected alpha level. The stereotypes that women held about men were inaccurate with men scoring higher than the stereotypes. The stereotypes that men held about women were moderately accurate with women scoring lower than the stereotypes. Although women scored higher than men on the Fairness subscale, this difference was not statistically significant (Table 3).

Table 3

Comparison of gender on actual and stereotype scores on fairness subscale (N = 300).

	Men (n = 150)	Women (n = 150)		95% Bootstrapped Cl		Cohen’s ds
Fairness Subscale	M(SD)	M(SD)	t(298)	LL	UL
Actual Scores	3.82(0.61)	4.01(0.54)	2.89	0.08	0.32	0.33
MA vs SAM	3.82(0.61)	3.42(0.78)	4.92*	0.24	0.56	0.57
WA vs SAW	4.01(0.54)	3.77(0.71)	3.31*	0.10	0.39	0.38

MA = Men Actual, SAM = Stereotype About Men, WA = Women Actual, SAW = Stereotype About Women, CI = Confidence Interval; LL = Lower Limit; UL = Upper Limit

*p< .003

No statistically significant differences were found at the corrected alpha level for comparison of gender on the Ingroup subtest. Men scored slightly higher than women on the Ingroup foundation, and the stereotypes that women held about men were moderately accurate with men scoring lower than the stereotypes. The stereotypes that men held about women were accurate with women scoring lower than the stereotypes (Table 4).

Table 4

Comparison of gender on actual and stereotype scores on ingroup subscale (N = 300).

	Men (n = 150)	Women (n = 150)		95% Bootstrapped Cl		Cohen’s ds
Ingroup Subscale	M(SD)	M(SD)	t(298)	LL	UL
Actual Scores	3.31(0.79)	3.17(0.78)	1.48	- 0.05	0.32	0.17
MA vs SAM	3.31(0.79)	3.51(0.77)	2.22	0.02	0.38	0.26
WA vs SAW	3.33(0.72)	3.17(0.78)	1.83	- 0.01	0.32	0.21

MA = Men Actual, SAM = Stereotype About Men, WA = Women Actual, SAW = Stereotype About Women, CI = Confidence Interval; LL = Lower Limit; UL = Upper Limit

*p< .003

Only one statistically significant difference at the corrected alpha level was revealed. The stereotypes that men held about women were inaccurate just above moderate accuracy with women scoring higher than the stereotypes. Women scored barely higher than men on the Authority subscale however this difference was not statistically significant. The stereotypes that women held about men were also accurate with men scoring slightly lower than the stereotypes, although this difference was also not statistically significant (Table 5).

Table 5

Comparison of gender on actual and stereotype scores on authority subscale (N = 300).

	Men (n = 150)	Women (n = 150)		95% Bootstrapped Cl		Cohen’s ds
Authority Subscale	M(SD)	M(SD)	t(298)	LL	UL
Actual Scores	3.37(0.65)	3.44(0.61)	0.92	- 0.07	0.21	0.1
MA vs SAM	3.37(0.65)	3.43(0.81)	0.68	- 0.1	0.23	0.08
WA vs SAW	3.08(0.78)	3.44(0.61)	4.45*	0.21	0.50	0.51

MA = Men Actual, SAM = Stereotype About Men, WA = Women Actual, SAW = Stereotype About Women, CI = Confidence Interval; LL = Lower Limit; UL = Upper Limit

*p< .003

No statistically significant differences were found at the corrected alpha level for comparison of gender on the Purity subscale. Women scored higher than men, and the stereotype they held about men were accurate with men scoring higher than the stereotype. The stereotype about women held by men was also accurate with women scoring slightly less than the stereotype (Table 6).

Table 6

Comparison of gender on actual and stereotype scores on purity subscale (N = 300).

	Men (n = 150)	Women (n = 150)		95% Bootstrapped Cl		Cohen’s ds
Purity Subscale	M(SD)	M(SD)	t(298)	LL	UL
Actual Scores	3.47(0.73)	3.67(0.76)	2.35	0.02	0.37	0.27
MA vs SAM	3.47(0.73)	3.26(0.92)	2.17	0.03	0.4	0.25
WA vs SAW	3.73(0.68)	3.67(0.76)	0.68	-0.11	0.22	0.08

MA = Men Actual, SAM = Stereotype About Men, WA = Women Actual, SAW = Stereotype About Women, CI = Confidence Interval; LL = Lower Limit; UL = Upper Limit

*p< .003

Discussion

The current study aimed to assess the accuracy of moral stereotypes that men and women hold about each other. This was done using the MFQ30 as a measure of morality in the form of endorsement of moral foundations. Men and women in the sample filled the questionnaire according to their own beliefs and also according to how they thought a typical member of the opposite gender would respond, which would reveal the stereotypes they held. The stereotypes about each gender were then compared to the actual responses given by them, to measure accuracy. The actual scores of men and women were also compared to each other in order to replicate the results from previous research.

MFQ30 showed low to moderate levels of alpha reliability in the current study. With the exception of the Sanctity subscale, each subscale showed negative inter-item correlations, with some subscales showing improved alpha reliability upon deletion of certain items. For example, on the Care subscale, the item “it can never be right to kill a human being” negatively correlated with the items “someone was cruel” and “compassion for those who are suffering is the most crucial virtue”. This makes sense in terms of the cultural and religious context of Pakistan, where people might believe that there are cases where killing another person is justified, while at the same time considering cruelty and compassion to be very relevant to their thinking about morality. Similarly, on the Fairness foundation, the item “I think it's morally wrong that rich children inherit a lot of money while poor children inherit nothing” negatively correlated with “someone acted unfairly” and “someone was denied his or her rights”. This could be due to a culture of strong kinship ties and inheritance of wealth, along with strict adherence to hierarchy [29], where people would* getting large amounts of inheritance, and concentration of wealth with a few people in authoritative postitions tocould be seen as being justified. This could be the case even though people do care about fairness in general. Indeed it must be noted that cultures do vary in terms of which aspects of the same moral dimension they give preference to [26]. On the Ingroup scale, the item “someone did something to betray his or her group” negatively correlated with “I am proud of my country’s history”. This might be due to the fact that Pakistan is culturally diverse with many different communities and ethnicities [51], which may feel more affiliation towards each other than the country as a whole. On the Authority subscale, the item “An action caused chaos and disorder” negatively correlated with “Men and women each have different roles to play in society” and “If I were a soldier and disagreed with my commanding officer's orders, I would obey anyway because that is my duty”. The reasons for such a negative correlation are not clear. Overall, the pattern of negative correlations suggests that differences between the culture in which MFQ30 was developed and the Pakistani culture, may have contributed to the low reliability and might indicate that validity was affected too as some items of the same subscale were not correlated.

Comparison of actual scores of men and women on the MFQ30 showed a statistically significant difference where women scored higher than men on the Harm foundation. Specifically, in the context of Pakistani culture, this can be explained by how Pakistan scores higher on “masculinity” [29] on Hofstede’s [27][28] cultural dimensions, characteristics of which include assertiveness and competitiveness, as opposed to femininity which involves caring for others and being more cooperative. All other differences were not statistically significant, and it remains to be seen whether with a larger sample size these differences turn out to be statistically significant.

With regard to the direction of the differences, all except one foundation showed the same pattern of difference as in [22]. As before, women scored higher than men on Care, Fairness and Sanctity, whereas men scored higher on Ingroup. However, as opposed to the findings of the previous research, women scored higher on Authority as well, with a greater effect size than was seen in Graham, et al. [22]. where men scored barely higher than women. One explanation for this result could be the internalization of patriarchy by women in Pakistani society [52], resulting in greater subordination and deference to authority. Overall, the direction of differences suggests that gender differences in moral foundation endorsement, follows a similar pattern in Pakistan as in the large international sample from Graham, et al. [22].

Previous research on consensual gender stereotypes has shown them to be generally accurate. For example, McCauley & Thangavelu [13] reported that stereotypes about the proportion of men and women in different occupations were predominantly accurate. Swim [14] also reported that stereotypes about sex differences among various characteristics, tended towards accuracy. Similarly, Beyer [15] found that the stereotypes about the percentage of women and men students in different academic fields as well as their GPAs were mostly accurate. Predominance of accuracy among stereotypes was also reported by Diekman, Eagly, and Kulesa [53] where attitudes of men and women regarding social and political issues were also found to range from accuracy for consensual discrepancy scores to near misses for personal discrepancies. Löckenhoff, et al. [16] also reported that consensual stereotypes about gender differences (perceived gender differences) on the Five Factor Model of personality were considerably accurate.

The current study however shows a different pattern, at least among the statistically significant results where most stereotypes were inaccurate. Two stereotypes held by women were inaccurate underestimations (Harm, Fairness), whereas one of the stereotypes held by men was an accurate overestimation (fairness) and one was a barely inaccurate underestimation (authority). This shows that overall; men were more accurate than women. For the other foundations, no inferences can be made due to not having reached statistical significance.

This suggests that women in Pakistan with similar characteristics as the sample in the current study might underestimate the importance men give to caring for, and dealing fairly with others. This could be reflective of how patriarchal [54] oppression of women in Pakistan [55][56] might have resulted in them developing expectations of an uncaring and unjust attitude from men. These expectations however do not match up with data from the men in the sample, possibly because of differences between men that attend university and those who do not. Indeed, as noted by Graham et al [26], people from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) segments of society hold different moral values than those from non-WEIRD backgrounds, and the men in this study might be different from those that do not go to university but still have an influence on the stereotypes held by women.

Men also underestimated on the Authority foundation and were inaccurate. This effect should also be explored further with attempts at replication.

It can be concluded that only one statistically significant difference between men and women could be found, which was on the Harm foundation. However, the direction of gender differences was the same as in Graham, et al. [22] for all foundations with the exception of one: Authority, where women scored higher than men. If these results indeed replicate and show a statistically significant difference with a larger sample, this might indicate that patterns of moral foundation endorsement related to gender may be similar in Pakistan as in other cultures, with some differences.

Future research should aim explore the determinants of over and under estimation in stereotypes, as well as why women underestimated the endorsement of Harm and Fairness by men and why men underestimated on Authority. This study should serve as a launch pad for further work on both moral psychology and the study of the Moral Foundations framework in the indigenous setting. Patterns of gender differences in the endorsement of multiple Moral Foundations should help in policy making and communication within organizations and institutions involving both men and women in order to better facilitate both genders.

Limitations and recommendations

Some limitations of the current study must be acknowledged. The sampling strategy was non-random and consisted mostly of university students, which would limit the generalizability of the results. The standard of comparison to test the stereotypes against was also not representative of the Pakistani population as it was taken from the sample itself due to resource limitations. We recommend that generalization of these results is restricted to university students with similar age and education levels as in the sample.

Future research should aim to validate the Urdu version of the MFQ30 should on a representative sample to verify the factor structure as well as the reliability of the scale in Pakistan in order to explore the reasons for low alpha reliability and negative inter-item correlations in the current study.

Further studies should also try to replicate the results of this study on a larger and more representative probability sample, and explore the determinants of over and under estimation in stereotypes, as well as why females underestimated the endorsement of Care and Fairness by males, why males underestimated on Authority.

This study was the first of its kind in utilizing the Moral Foundations framework and the MFQ30 on a sample consisting solely of Pakistanis, through both in person and online data collection. As such it should serve as a launch pad for further work on both moral psychology and the study of the Moral Foundations framework in the Pakistani context.

Patterns of gender differences in the endorsement of multiple Moral Foundations should help in policy making and communication within organizations and institutions involving both males and females in order to better facilitate both genders. The general accuracy of gender stereotypes regarding moral foundations should also serve to indicate that males’ and females’ perception of each other’s morality is mostly accuarate to moderately accurate. However, females with similar characteristics to the sample in this study might underestimate the endorsement of Care and Fairness foundations by males in general and this should serve to make the general public look into the matter as it could be the result of distorted perceptions from the media among other reasons. The same holds true for underestimation of females’ endorsement of Authority by males in the sample.

(DOCX)

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4 Nov 2019

PONE-D-19-25204

Title: Accuracy of Consensual Stereotypes in Moral Foundations: A Gender Analysis

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Inam,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please find the reviewers' comments below, as well as those from my own.

We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Dec 19 2019 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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Valerio Capraro

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

I have now collected two reviews from two experts in the field. The reviewers like the paper but suggest several improvements. Therefore, I would like to invite you to revise your manuscript according to their comments. Additionally, I would like to add one more comment regarding the literature review, which ignores the enormous literature on gender differences in various domains of morality. For example: gender differences in moral judgments in moral dilemmas (Fumagalli et al. 2010; Friesdorf et al. 2015; Capraro & Sippel, 2017), gender differences in honesty (Capraro, 2018; Abeler et al. 2019; Gerlach et al. 2019); gender differences in cooperation (Rand, 2017); gender differences in altruism (Rand et al. 2016; Branas-Garza et al. 2018). Of course it is not a requirement to cite these specific works, but I think that, anyway, the literature review on gender differences should be highly improved.

I am looking forward for the revision.

References

J Abeler, D Nosenzo, C Raymond (2019) Preferences for truth‐telling. Econometrica 87 (4), 1115-1153

P Brañas-Garza, V Capraro, E Rascón-Ramírez (2018) Gender differences in altruism on mechanical turk: Expectations and actual behaviour. Economics Letters 170, 19-23

V Capraro (2018) Gender differences in lying in sender-receiver games: A meta-analysis. Judgment and Decision Making 13, 345-355

V Capraro, J Sippel (2017) Gender differences in moral judgment and the evaluation of gender-specified moral agents. Cognitive processing 18 (4), 399-405

Friesdorf, R., Conway, P., & Gawronski, B. (2015). Gender differences in responses to moral dilemmas: a process dissociation analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(5), 696-713.

Fumagalli, M., Ferrucci, R., Mameli, F., Marceglia, S., Mrakic-Sposta, S., Zago, S., ... & Cappa, S. (2010). Gender-related differences in moral judgments. Cognitive processing, 11(3), 219-226.

Gerlach, P., Teodorescu, K., & Hertwig, R. (2019). The truth about lies: A meta-analysis on dishonest behavior. Psychological bulletin, 145(1), 1.

DG Rand, VL Brescoll, JAC Everett, V Capraro, H Barcelo (2016) Social heuristics and social roles: Intuition favors altruism for women but not for men. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 145 (4), 389-396

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

**********

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Summary

The contribution investigated in a 300 Pakistani adults the moral stereotypes that males and females hold about each other and the influences of gender in such moral stereotypical representations using the Moral Foundation Questionnaire (MFQ30). Participants were asked in two times to respond (1) for themselves (actual score) and (2) how a typical member of the other gender group, according to their perception, would answer (other gender stereotypes score). The Females scored higher than Males only on the Care Foundation sub-scale. Females underestimated Stereotypes about Males on the Harm and Fairness foundations; Males were accurate on Fairness foundation of Females, whereas underestimated their Authority foundation.

Comments

In general the topic of the consensual stereotypes about moral foundation attributed to the other gender group, is relevant and not yet studied. The theoretical frame is pertinent and the relevance of the study is also well motivated by the recent spread of anti-sexist movements not only in the western world. Nevertheless I was surprised by the absence of any mention to the debate about the cross-cultural differences in the people morality judgement (e.g. Graham et al., 2011 for East- West differences in foundation endorsement, even if as the effect sizes in their results showed, the gender differences were much stronger than the differences between Eastern and Western cultures).

It could be necessary for introducing this study to propose some considerations and references about the main characteristics of Pakistani culture which certainly influences the relationships between genders and may partly explain possible differences across gender stereotypes. In fact expectations about the specificity of cultural context of participants are missing, nor this relevant aspect has been sufficiently covered in the discussion. At last in the Introduction Section would be useful to refer to empathy disposition, as a recognized discriminant factor between several cross gender dimensions.

.

Moreover I have concerns about some aspects of the methodological approach.

1. The choice of the sample, constituted in prevalence by university students, is not representative of the Pakistani population. This must be acknowledged among the limitations of the study;

2. Alpha coefficients for single scale in the sample examined are missing;

Minor points:

1. Why in all tables the average scores (Actual and Stereotypes scores) of Males (MA vs, SAM) and Females (SAF vs. FA) are reported in a different order? This is confusing.

2. The labels of the 5 moral Foundations are differently used in the different parties of the text. For example the Harm/Care sub-scale in prevalence is called simply Care sub-scale, sometimes it is called Harm sub-scale. On the other side, Graham et al. in their validation study of MFQ (2011) called the 5 sub-scales using the first label for each couple (Harm, Fairness, In-group, Authority, Purity). For more clarity and consistency in the interpretation of the results obtained, according to my opinion it would be better using always the complete labels of the 5 moral bi-dimensional Foundations (Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, In-group/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, Purity/Sanctity).

Reviewer #2: In the manuscript the authors present one study aimed at examining consensual moral stereotypes that women and men hold about each other. The topic is innovative and contributes to the literature on social judgment and morality. It is also interesting to read findings about the Pakistani population since to my knowledge, most studies on morality concern populations from Western countries. I have however some concerns, regarding, in particular, how the study is presented at the conceptual level.

Indeed, I do not understand why the study is presented as a research on stereotype accuracy. According to Jussim et al. (2015), who are cited in the manuscript, the assessment of stereotype accuracy implies a comparison between people’s beliefs about a group and some criteria that establish group characteristics (i.e., more objective data such Census data about the proportion of people who have certain characteristics or perform specific behaviors). In the present manuscript, such a comparison is not done. If I understood well, the authors claim that a “standard of comparison” can be represented by ratings of women and men about themselves. However, it seems to me that these can be intended as self-construal ratings rather than criteria that allow to grasp stereotype accuracy. This is my major concern. I think a different framework for the research would increase the impact and the readability of the paper.

I would also stress the importance of collecting such data in the Pakistani context, and would discuss in a deeper way how these results can be specific for that context (or can be generalized to others). This argument might also be developed in the future directions section.

With respect to the implications of the research, the authors anticipate in the introduction the importance of exploring morality and related stereotypes in the light of the #MeToo movement. I think a similar reasoning should be moved to (and expanded in) the discussion.

Moreover, I find that the very last paragraph of the discussion should be expanded. The authors should provide more reasoning on the practical implications of this study.

Minor points:

I find it very hard to follow the section results due to the numerous acronyms used in the Tables (MA, SAM, SAF, FA)

I am not an English-native speaker, but I have the impression that the manuscript would benefit from a linguistic revision. Moreover, to my knowledge the APA style does not use male and female as nouns, but only as adjectives. I would rather use women and men as nouns.

**********

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Carmen Belacchi

Reviewer #2: No

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7 Jan 2020

Rebuttal Letter

Comments

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

No response required.

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

No response required.

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Data is provided as supporting file.

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Corrected after rigorous proof-reading.

Reviews

Editor’s Comments

1.When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

Edited accordingly

2. Thank you for your ethics statement: "Written informed consent was taken to record their willingness. Informed consent was provided by the departmental ethics review committee, which was developed according to ethical standards of American Psychological Association."

- Please amend your current ethics statement to include the full name of the ethics committee/institutional review board(s) that approved your specific study.

- Once you have amended this/these statement(s) in the Methods section of the manuscript, please add the same text to the “Ethics Statement” field of the submission form (via “Edit Submission”).

For additional information about PLOS ONE ethical requirements for human subjects research, please refer to http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-human-subjects-research.

Added in ethics statement (Line 235- 236).

3. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For more information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions.

In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts:

a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent.

b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories.

We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide.

“b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers.” is the choice suitable.

Data is uploaded as supporting file.

Additionally, I would like to add one more comment regarding the literature review, which ignores the enormous literature on gender differences in various domains of morality. For example: gender differences in moral judgments in moral dilemmas (Fumagalli et al. 2010; Friesdorf et al. 2015; Capraro & Sippel, 2017), gender differences in honesty (Capraro, 2018; Abeler et al. 2019; Gerlach et al. 2019); gender differences in cooperation (Rand, 2017); gender differences in altruism (Rand et al. 2016; Branas-Garza et al. 2018). Of course, it is not a requirement to cite these specific works, but I think that, anyway, the literature review on gender differences should be highly improved.

I am looking forward for the revision.

Added in the literature review (Line 109- 127)

Editor’s Comments Received on December 23rd, 2019

In your ethics statement you write:

"Written informed consent was taken to record their willingness. Informed consent was provided by the Departmental Ethics Review Committee, Department of Humanities, COMSATS University Islamabad, which was developed according to ethical standards of American Psychological Association."

Please specify whether the Departmental Ethics Review Committee, Department of Humanities, COMSATS University Islamabad approved the current study.

The current study was approved by Departmental Ethics Review Committee, Department of Humanities, COMSATS University Islamabad (Line 235- 236).

Editor’s Comments Received on January 2nd, 2020

Thank you for the additional edits. For clarity and to avoid confusion, we recommend removing the statement reading, "Informed consent was provided by the Departmental Ethics Review Committee, Department of Humanities, COMSATS University Islamabad, which was developed according to ethical standards of American Psychological Association."

Also, in the manuscript, you note a consent form is provided in Appendix A, but we cannot find a consent form or an appendix. Please update this before we proceed.

Removed as directed. Attached informed consent in the end as Appendix A.

Reviewer 1

Nevertheless I was surprised by the absence of any mention to the debate about the cross-cultural differences in the people morality judgement (e.g. Graham et al., 2011 for East- West differences in foundation endorsement, even if as the effect sizes in their results showed, the gender differences were much stronger than the differences between Eastern and Western cultures).

It could be necessary for introducing this study to propose some considerations and references about the main characteristics of Pakistani culture which certainly influences the relationships between genders and may partly explain possible differences across gender stereotypes. In fact expectations about the specificity of cultural context of participants are missing, nor this relevant aspect has been sufficiently covered in the discussion. At last in the Introduction Section would be useful to refer to empathy disposition, as a recognized discriminant factor between several cross-gender dimensions.

Added in introduction (Line 84-108 & Line 155- 159).

Added in discussion (Lines 361- 364, 398- 405).

Moreover, I have concerns about some aspects of the methodological approach.

1. The choice of the sample, constituted in prevalence by university students, is not representative of the Pakistani population. This must be acknowledged among the limitations of the study;

2. Alpha coefficients for single scale in the sample examined are missing;

1. Added in discussion (Lines 422- 427).

2. Added in results (Line 266- 273) & Added in discussion (Lines: 331-358).

Minor points:

1. Why in all tables the average scores (Actual and Stereotypes scores) of Males (MA vs, SAM) and Females (SAF vs. FA) are reported in a different order? This is confusing.

2. The labels of the 5 moral Foundations are differently used in the different parties of the text. For example the Harm/Care sub-scale in prevalence is called simply Care sub-scale, sometimes it is called Harm sub-scale. On the other side, Graham et al. in their validation study of MFQ (2011) called the 5 sub-scales using the first label for each couple (Harm, Fairness, In-group, Authority, Purity). For more clarity and consistency in the interpretation of the results obtained, according to my opinion it would be better using always the complete labels of the 5 moral bi-dimensional Foundations (Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, In-group/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, Purity/Sanctity).

1.Corrected in all tables as “MA = Men Actual, SAM = Stereotype About Men, WA = Women Actual, SAW = Stereotype About Women.”

2. Corrected throughout text as “Harm, Fairness, In-group, Authority, Purity” according to Graham et al. (2011).

Reviewer 2

I have however some concerns, regarding, in particular, how the study is presented at the conceptual level.

Indeed, I do not understand why the study is presented as a research on stereotype accuracy. According to Jussim et al. (2015), who are cited in the manuscript, the assessment of stereotype accuracy implies a comparison between people’s beliefs about a group and some criteria that establish group characteristics (i.e., more objective data such Census data about the proportion of people who have certain characteristics or perform specific behaviors). In the present manuscript, such a comparison is not done. If I understood well, the authors claim that a “standard of comparison” can be represented by ratings of women and men about themselves. However, it seems to me that these can be intended as self-construal ratings rather than criteria that allow to grasp stereotype accuracy. This is my major concern. I think a different framework for the research would increase the impact and the readability of the paper.

Added in Introduction (Line 168-192)

I would also stress the importance of collecting such data in the Pakistani context, and would discuss in a deeper way how these results can be specific for that context (or can be generalized to others). This argument might also be developed in the future directions section.

Pakistani culture and other aspects relevant to the context of the research have now been mentioned in the introduction and discussion section. (Line 84-108, 155- 159, 361- 364, 398- 405)

With respect to the implications of the research, the authors anticipate in the introduction the importance of exploring morality and related stereotypes in the light of the #MeToo movement. I think a similar reasoning should be moved to (and expanded in) the discussion. Moreover, I find that the very last paragraph of the discussion should be expanded. The authors should provide more reasoning on the practical implications of this study.

Added in discussion (Line 398- 405)

Minor points:

I find it very hard to follow the section results due to the numerous acronyms used in the Tables (MA, SAM, SAF, FA)

I am not an English-native speaker, but I have the impression that the manuscript would benefit from a linguistic revision. Moreover, to my knowledge the APA style does not use male and female as nouns, but only as adjectives. I would rather use women and men as nouns.

1. Corrected in all tables as “MA = Men Actual, SAM = Stereotype About Men, WA = Women Actual, SAW = Stereotype About Women.”

2. Corrected as Men & Women across paper.

Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx

Click here for additional data file.

28 Jan 2020

PONE-D-19-25204R1

Title: Accuracy of Consensual Stereotypes in Moral Foundations: A Gender Analysis

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Inam,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Mar 13 2020 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter.

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). This letter should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.

A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.

An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Manuscript'.

Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Valerio Capraro

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

One reviewer still has some minor suggestions. Please address them at your earliest convenience. I am looking forward for the final version.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: In the revised version, the authors have addressed the points raised by me and the other reviewer. In particular, I appreciated the adding of more considerations and references to the Pakistani context, which help understand and contextualize the findings.

I only have few concerns, which are outlined below.

With respect to gender differences in morality, the authors mostly reported studies on moral judgment. Even though I agree that there has been little research on morality in gender stereotypes, I suggest that the authors look at and eventually add the evidence of Leach, Carraro, Garcia, & Kang (2017) on stereotype of women as more trustworthy than men; Sheppard and Johnson (2019) on attractiveness and trustworthiness; Moscatelli, Menegatti et al. (2020, advanced online publication on Sex Roles) on the importance of morality for women in employment evaluation. Other studies that have shown differences in morality between women and men are Franke, Crown, & Spake, 1997; Lippa, 1998; Muehlheusser, Roider, & Wallmeier, 2015.

Basing on the mentioned evidence, I would be more cautious than saying “…since no published work could be found on the topic of moral stereotypes and gender” (lines 152-154). I would rather say that the evidence on this issue is rare.

At the end of the introduction, the authors highlighted some limitations of the study. While I appreciate this part, I think they should just mention these limitations and discuss them more in depth (for instance, the last sentence, line 189-192) in the limitations section in the discussion (which is embedded in the text at the moment).

I would rename the section “Materials and Methods” as “Method”.

In the discussion, line 343, I cannot understand the sentence “…where people could large amounts of…”

I would avoid reporting statistics in the discussion (d values), could they be moved to the results section?

**********

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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18 Feb 2020

Rebuttal Letter

Comments

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2:

In the revised version, the authors have addressed the points raised by me and the other reviewer. In particular, I appreciated the adding of more considerations and references to the Pakistani context, which help understand and contextualize the findings.

I only have few concerns, which are outlined below.

With respect to gender differences in morality, the authors mostly reported studies on moral judgment. Even though I agree that there has been little research on morality in gender stereotypes, I suggest that the authors look at and eventually add the evidence of Leach, Carraro, Garcia, & Kang (2017) on stereotype of women as more trustworthy than men; Sheppard and Johnson (2019) on attractiveness and trustworthiness; Moscatelli, Menegatti et al. (2020, advanced online publication on Sex Roles) on the importance of morality for women in employment evaluation. Other studies that have shown differences in morality between women and men are Franke, Crown, & Spake, 1997; Lippa, 1998; Muehlheusser, Roider, & Wallmeier, 2015.

Added in introduction (Line 75- 98; 107-112) and References (Line 516-524; 532-536).

Basing on the mentioned evidence, I would be more cautious than saying “…since no published work could be found on the topic of moral stereotypes and gender” (lines 152-154). I would rather say that the evidence on this issue is rare.

Corrected Line 181-183.

At the end of the introduction, the authors highlighted some limitations of the study. While I appreciate this part, I think they should just mention these limitations and discuss them more in depth (for instance, the last sentence, line 189-192) in the limitations section in the discussion (which is embedded in the text at the moment).

Line 189-192 removed from introduction. Limitations and recommendations is made as a separate section (Line 448) and is discussed in detail (Line 449 - 454).

I would rename the section “Materials and Methods” as “Method”.

Corrected Line 219.

In the discussion, line 343, I cannot understand the sentence “…where people could large amounts of…”

Corrected Line 369.

I would avoid reporting statistics in the discussion (d values), could they be moved to the results section?

Removed from discussion section.

Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx

Click here for additional data file.

19 Feb 2020

Title: Accuracy of Consensual Stereotypes in Moral Foundations: A Gender Analysis

PONE-D-19-25204R2

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Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

24 Feb 2020

PONE-D-19-25204R2

Accuracy of Consensual Stereotypes in Moral Foundations: A Gender Analysis

Dear Dr. Inam:

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