Internalized misogyny in women: Differences between adulthoodstages and the role of cognitive emotion regulation, emotional authenticity & mindfulness

The study was designed to investigate the levels of internalized misogyny among adult women within different age groups and to evaluate the possible relationship between women's cognitive emotion regulation skills, emotional authenticity levels, and mindfulness levels. In the research, age was examined into three developmental groups as emerging adulthood, early adulthood and middle adulthood. The study is framed within an exploratory approach aimed at describing patterns among the variables and examining potential associations. The findings indicated that internalized misogyny did not significantly differ across age groups. In contrast, weak but significant associations were found between emotional authenticity levels and certain cognitive emotion regulation strategies and the subdimensions of internalized misogyny. The results further demonstrated a significant negative relationship between internalized misogyny and emotional authenticity, whereas no significant relationship was observed between mindfulness levels and internalized misogyny. Hierarchical regression analyses suggested that certain emotional variables may be associated with specific subdimensions of internalized misogyny; however, the amount of explained variance remained relatively limited. Overall, the findings indicate that internalized misogyny follows relatively similar patterns across adulthood, while emotional authenticity appears to be a meaningful emotional process associated with this attitude. This study suggests that internalized misogyny may be related not only to cultural and social interaction processes but also to the ways in which emotional experiences are interpreted and expressed, thereby offering a theoretical framework for the existing literature.