Are sexualized women complete human beings? Why men and women dehumanize sexually objectified women

Focusing on the dehumanization of sexually objectified targets, study 1 tested the extent to which objectified and non‐objectified male and female publicity photos were associated with human compared to animal concepts. Results confirmed the hypothesis that, among all targets, only objectified women were associated with less human concepts. This pattern of results emerged for both male and female participants but likely for different reasons. Study 2 directly looked at female and male participants' affinity with sexually objectified women. Results indicated that the more women distanced themselves from sexually objectified women the more they dehumanized them, whereas men's sexual attraction moderated their tendency to dehumanize female targets. In study 3, this latter motivation was operationalized as the activation of a sex goal and showed to trigger man's but not woman's dehumanization of female targets. Overall, the present set of studies show that only sexually objectified women are dehumanized by both men and women but for different reasons. Whereas sexual attraction shifts a men's focus of a female target away from her personality onto her body triggering a dehumanization process, women are more inclined to dehumanize their sexually objectified counterparts the more they distance themselves from these sexualized representations of their gender category. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Brightness for different surround conditions: the effect of transient glare

We measured the effect of a transient glare source on t heperceived brightness of astandard luminance (L(STD)) patch (0.5 cd/m2) as a function of the surround luminance (Ls). In the experiment, both increment and decrement stimuli were dependent on the value of the Ls (0.01, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.5, or 2.0 cd/m2). We adopted a magnitude comparison paradigm using constant stimuli to determine the test matching luminance (L(M)). When L(S) was lower than the luminance of the patch, which corresponds to increments, LM was lower than L(STD), and this effect was highest for the lowest L(S). There was a small but noticeable cusp as increments shifted to decrements. As L(S) increased further (i.e., as the decrement grew), L(M) flattened out below L(STF). The overall pattern of results could be interpreted in terms of the concept of contrast brightness, with consideration of the intrinsic differences in brightness evaluations between decrements and increments.     

Potential Projective Material on the Rorschach: Comparing Comprehensive System Protocols to Their Modeled R-Optimized Administration Counterparts

Exner (1989 Exner, J. E. (1989). Searching for projection in the Rorschach. Journal of Personality Assessment, 53, 520–536.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Weiner (2003 Weiner, I. B. (2003). Principles of Rorschach interpretation (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. [Google Scholar]) identified 3 types of Rorschach codes that are most likely to contain personally relevant projective material: Distortions, Movement, and Embellishments. We examine how often these types of codes occur in normative data and whether their frequency changes for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or last response to a card. We also examine the impact on these variables of the Rorschach Performance Assessment System's (R–PAS) statistical modeling procedures that convert the distribution of responses (R) from Comprehensive System (CS) administered protocols to match the distribution of R found in protocols obtained using R-optimized administration guidelines. In 2 normative reference databases, the results indicated that about 40% of responses (M = 39.25) have 1 type of code, 15% have 2 types, and 1.5% have all 3 types, with frequencies not changing by response number. In addition, there were no mean differences in the original CS and R-optimized modeled records (M Cohen's d = –0.04 in both databases). When considered alongside findings showing minimal differences between the protocols of people randomly assigned to CS or R-optimized administration, the data suggest R-optimized administration should not alter the extent to which potential projective material is present in a Rorschach protocol.     

On the (dis-)confirmability of stereotypic attributes

Two experiments investigated the linguistic abstractness and confirmability of elements contained in ingroup and outgroup stereotypes. The first experiment shows that positive elements of the ingroup stereotype (Italians) and negative elements of the outgroup stereotype (Jews, Germans) tended to be particularly abstract. Also, negative elements contained in the outgroup stereotypes required relatively little evidence to be considered ‘true’ but much disconfirming evidence to be rejected as ‘false’. No such bias emerged for ingroup stereotypes. The second experiment compared the abstraction of four outgroup stereotypes (Jews, Blacks, homosexuals, career women) finding the greatest abstraction for the oldest stereotype (Jews), and least abstraction for the most recent stereotype (career women) with the remaining two groups (Blacks, homosexuals) occupying an intermediate position. Results are interpreted as suggesting that stereotypes may become more abstract over time as they lose the concrete elements that are easier to disconfirm while maintaining the abstract elements that are more resistant to change. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.