Joining the gender war online: entitativity, negative emotion, and engagement with gender-polarized posts

Introduction Gender-polarized discourse has become increasingly visible on social media, where interpersonal conflicts are often generalized to broader gender groups. This study examined the associations of perceived group entitativity and negative intergroup emotion with individuals' responses to gender-polarized framing in online discourse. Methods A total of 800 Chinese adults were exposed to gender-conflict posts presented in RedNote-like or Zhihu-like social-media contexts. The posts described interpersonal conflicts and explicitly generalized these incidents to the target gender group. Participants subsequently reported their perceived group entitativity, negative intergroup emotion, and responses to gender-polarized framing. Results Perceived group entitativity was strongly and positively associated with responses to gender-polarized framing, indicating greater alignment with negative group-based narratives among participants who perceived the target gender as a coherent social entity. Negative intergroup emotion was also positively associated with these responses, although the hypothesized indirect effect of entitativity through negative emotion was not supported. Responses differed modestly between the two gender-pairing conditions, whereas neither the main effect of platform context nor the gender-pairing × platform interaction was significant. Discussion These findings suggest that perceived group coherence and negative intergroup emotion are associated with individuals' alignment with gender-polarized narratives on social media. The results highlight the importance of distinguishing the initial emergence of group generalization from psychological responses to generalizations already embedded in online discourse.