From Agents to Objects: Sexist Attitudes and Neural Responses to Sexualized Targets

摘要

Agency attribution is a hallmark of mind perception; thus, diminishednattributions of agency may disrupt social–cognitionnprocesses typically elicited by human targets. The current studiesnexamine the effect of perceiversʼ sexist attitudes on associationsnof agency with, and neural responses to, images of sexualized andnclothed men and women. In Study 1, male ( but not female) participantsnwith higher hostile sexism scores more quickly associatednsexualized women with first-person action verbs (“handle”)nand clothed women with third-person action verbs (“handles”)nthan the inverse, as compared to their less sexist peers. In Study 2,nhostile sexism correlated negatively with activation of regions associatednwith mental state attribution—medial prefrontal cortex,nposterior cingulate, temporal poles—but onlywhen viewing sexualizednwomen. Heterosexual men best recognized images of sexualizednfemale bodies (but not faces), as compared with other targetsʼnbodies; however, neither face nor body recognition was related tonhostile sexism, suggesting that the fMRI findings are not explainednby more or less attention to sexualized female targets. Diminishednmental state attribution is not unique to targets that people prefernto avoid, as in dehumanization of stigmatized people. The currentnstudies demonstrate that appetitive social targets may elicit a similarnresponse depending on perceiversʼ attitudes toward them. ■