Is the social desirability bias gendered? Gender, prejudice, and preference falsification

Individuals, when in the presence of others, tend to falsify their preferences when these deviate too much from social norms, in order to avoid getting sanctioned. This is the case for prejudiced attitudes: people tend to under-report agreement with racist statements or vote for far-right parties. However, no research has yet systematically addressed the extent to which this pattern could be gendered. Drawing on social role theory, which holds that women and men are expected to display different personality traits and are sanctioned for different behaviors, I theorize that women face more sanctions than men when expressing prejudice and thus falsify their preferences more than men on these topics. I test this hypothesis by looking at the effect of mode and gender in with a multilevel model, on survey data collected in two modes: one with an interviewer present and one without.