Automatic Dehumanization Across Menstrual Cycle

Abstract

In the current study we address the role of hormonal fluctuations across menstrual cycle in female dehumanization of women and men. Using a sequential priming procedure in a lexical decision task, we test whether increased levels of conception risk lead to dehumanization of other women and men on both animal and human dimensions. Results showed that for word woman as the prime, animal words were more accessible in the high than in the low conception risk of the menstrual cycle; whereas human words were more inhibited in the high compared to the low conception risk. As for word man prime, no difference in terms of accessibility was found between the high and the low conception risk on both animaland human-words. This study demonstrates that dehumanization of women is automatically elicited by menstrual cycle–related processes and associated with women’s mate-attraction goals.