A little bird told me…: Consequences of holding an implicit association between women and birds

Past research has shown that humans possess implicit associations that, when activated, affect subsequent behavior. In three studies, we demonstrated a novel implicit association held by some men: an association between women and birds. Additionally, we demonstrated three consequences of possessing and activating a Women–Birds association. For those who strongly associated women and birds, activating the association caused an increase in dehumanization of women, perceptions of female incompetence, and sexist hiring decisions. Perceptions of female incompetence mediated the effect of Women–Birds implicit association activation on sexist hiring decisions. These findings provide insight into a potential cause of bias toward women that should be accounted for when attempting to reduce discrimination toward women and speak to the need for careful consideration when making analogies linking social groups to animals or objects.     

Imagined contact with famous gay men and lesbians reduces heterosexuals’ misidentification concerns and sexual prejudice

Gay men and lesbians experience bigotry at alarmingly high rates. Traditionally, researchers have focused on reducing sexual prejudice; however, research indicates that heterosexuals’ concerns about being misidentified as gay/lesbian also contribute to the derogation of gay/lesbian individuals. Thus, reducing misidentification concerns is a critical part of decreasing negativity toward gay/lesbian individuals. In the current work, we explored a novel addition to the imagined contact paradigm—imagined contact with famous outgroup members—for reducing misidentification concerns. We found that imagined contact with famous gay men/lesbians reduced misidentification concerns within the imagined interaction and engendered an eagerness to befriend the famous gay/lesbian interaction partner. Moreover, we found that the reduction of these misidentification concerns led to fewer general contagion concerns, and increased eagerness to befriend led to decreased sexual prejudice. The current work develops a useful intervention for improving multiple responses toward gay men and lesbians.     

Childhood sexual and physical abuse and the 1-year prevalence of medical problems in the National Comorbidity Survey.

In a population sample (N=5,877; ages 15 to 54), the authors found childhood sexual and physical abuse to be associated with the 1-year prevalence of serious health problems for both men and women. The authors also found that participants' psychiatric disorders partially mediated the effects of physical and sexual abuse on adult health. However, childhood abuse continued to independently influence health status after the authors controlled for psychiatric disorders. Contrary to expectations, individuals who experienced a combination of sexual and physical abuse did not have a higher frequency of health problems than those who experienced either type of abuse alone. Implications for these findings are discussed, including possible mechanisms that may account for the association between childhood abuse and adult health problems.     

Eye movements of highly skilled and average readers: Differential effects of frequency and predictability

This study offers a glimpse of the moment-by-moment processes used by highly skilled and average readers during silent reading. The eye movements of adult readers were monitored while they silently read sentences. Fixation durations and the spatial-temporal patterns of eye movements were examined to see whether the two groups of readers exhibited differential effects of frequency and/or predictability. In Experiment 1, high- and low-frequency target words were embedded in nonconstraining sentence contexts. In Experiment 2, the same participants read high- and low-frequency target words that were either predictable or unpredictable, embedded in highly constraining sentence contexts. Results indicated that when target words appeared in highly constraining sentence contexts, the average readers showed different effects of frequency and predictability from those shown in the highly skilled readers. It appears that reading skill can interact with predictability to affect the word recognition processes used during silent reading.     

THE VIEW FROM DOWN HERE

In this article, graduate students and one faculty member respond to the innovative methods presented in this issue. We identify three theoretical and methodological tensions that shape our interest in and willingness to work with these methods. The first questions whether the strengths of doing qualitative research outweigh the limitations. The second involves feminist research ideals and how attainable they are. The third explores epistemological tensions between qualitative and quantitative research. Although intrigued by the data these methods generated and by their underlying epistemology, we question the status of certain qualitative research in psychology. We contend that the criteria by which qualitative research is evaluated must be made more explicitly before quantitatively trained researchers will incorporate these methods into their own work.