The afterglow of construct accessibility: The behavioral consequences of priming men to view women as sexual objects

The hypothesis that temporary and chronic construct accessibility effects may independently influence cognitive and behavioral reactions was examined. Male subjects blocked on the Likelihood to Sexually Harass (LSH) scale (Pryor, 1987) were randomly assigned to priming condition (control vs facilitation of the category, women as sexual objects). On a lexical decision task, as predicted, primed subjects responded faster to sexist words than did control subjects. In addition, they were slower to recognize nonsexist words pertaining to women than were controls. All subjects subsequently interviewed a female confederate job applicant under high or low power conditions. The power manipulation, the priming manipulation, and the individual difference measure proved to be associated with subjects′ (1) stereotyped information acquisition during the interview and (2) sexualized behavior during the interview. In addition, both the priming manipulation and the dispositional measure were associated with sex-typed evaluations of the confederate. The findings are supportive of an additive versus an interactive model, whereby either chronic or temporary construct accessibility may be sufficient to produce sex discriminatory behavior.