Melissa J. Ferguson

Everyday Sexism: Evidence for Its Incidence, Nature, and Psychological Impact From Three Daily Diary Studies

Three daily diary studies were conducted to examine the incidence, nature, and impact of everyday sexism as reported by college women and men. Women experienced about one to two impactful sexist incidents per week, consisting of traditional gender role stereotypes and prejudice, demeaning and degrading comments and behaviors, and sexual objectification. These incidents affected womens psychological well-being by decreasing their comfort, increasing their feelings of anger and depression, and decreasing their state self-esteem. Although the experiences had similar effects on mens anger, depression, and state self-esteem, men reported relatively fewer sexist incidents, suggesting less overall impact on men. The results provide evidence for the phenomena of everyday prejudice and enlighten our understanding of the experience of prejudice in interpersonal encounters from the perspective of the target.

A Single Exposure to the American Flag Shifts Support Toward Republicanism up to 8 Months Later

There is scant evidence that incidental cues in the environment significantly alter people’s political judgments and behavior in a durable way. We report that a brief exposure to the American flag led to a shift toward Republican beliefs, attitudes, and voting behavior among both Republican and Democratic participants, despite their overwhelming belief that exposure to the flag would not influence their behavior. In Experiment 1, which was conducted online during the 2008 U.S. presidential election, a single exposure to an American flag resulted in a significant increase in participants’ Republican voting intentions, voting behavior, political beliefs, and implicit and explicit attitudes, with some effects lasting 8 months after the exposure to the prime. In Experiment 2, we replicated the findings more than a year into the current Democratic presidential term. These results constitute the first evidence that nonconscious priming effects from exposure to a national flag can bias the citizenry toward one political party and can have considerable durability.

The cost of keeping it hidden: decomposing concealment reveals what makes it depleting.

People possess information or identities that it sometimes behooves them to conceal, but at what cost? Participants who were instructed to conceal information during a short interview--either their sexual orientation (Studies 1-3) or specified words (Study 4)--showed evidence of self-regulatory depletion. Concealment led to deficits in intellectual acuity, interpersonal restraint, physical stamina, and executive function. We decomposed depletion into 2 component processes that, together or separately, might contribute to the observed depletion. When actively concealing information, one must monitor for specific content to inhibit. If taboo content is detected, one must modify or alter ones speech from what one would have said otherwise. Concealment produced depletion even when there was no need to actually alter ones speech (Studies 2 and 4), demonstrating that monitoring ones speech for content to conceal was sufficient to cause depletion. In contrast, having to alter ones speech without having to monitor for specific content to inhibit--either by adding false content (Study 3) or inserting specific words into ones speech stream (Study 4)--did not lead to measurable depletion. In this way, the studies are the first to assess which part of an act of self-regulation--monitoring for specific behavior to override or the actual altering of that behavior--is responsible for observed depletion. Furthermore, the research suggests that social environments that explicitly or implicitly encourage identity concealment may prevent people from performing optimally.

Psychological distance can improve decision making under information overload via gist memory.

Making a decision can be especially difficult when it is based upon a large amount of information. A number of demonstrations in the literature suggest that decision making under information overload leads to suboptimal outcomes. In this article, we draw on construal level theory (Trope & Liberman, 2003) and fuzzy-trace theory (Brainerd & Reyna, 1993) to suggest that psychologically distancing oneself from the information can be beneficial to decision making under information overload. Specifically, we propose that distancing prompts organization of information in terms of its gist. Across 4 studies, we demonstrated that increasing spatial distance, temporal distance, and abstraction lead to better decision outcomes when decision makers were overloaded with many pieces of information per decision. Furthermore, we showed that the relationship between psychological distance and decision outcome is mediated by gist memory.

Affect in the aftermath: How goal pursuit influences implicit evaluations

Previous research has shown that the activation of a goal leads to more implicit positivity toward goal-relevant stimuli. We examined how the actual pursuit of a goal influences subsequent implicit positivity toward such stimuli. Participants were consciously or non-consciously primed with a goal, or not, and then completed a goal-relevant task on which they succeeded or failed. We then measured their goal-relevant implicit attitudes. Those who were primed with the goal (consciously or non-consciously) and experienced success exhibited more implicit positivity toward the goal, compared with the no-goal condition. Experiencing failure in the goal priming conditions reduced implicit positivity toward the goal, indicating disengagement from the goal. We discuss the theoretical implications for understanding the role of implicit attitudes in self-regulation.

Précis of implicit nationalism.

While the study of nationalism has received much attention throughout the social sciences and humanities, the experimental investigation of it lags behind. In this paper we review recent advances in the examination of implicit nationalism. In the first set of experiments we survey, the Palestinian, Israeli, Italian, and Russian flags were primed (or not, in the control conditions) and their effects on political thought and behavior were tested. In the second set the American or the Israeli flag was primed (or not) and prejudice toward African‐Americans or Palestinians (respectively) was examined. The results of all experiments suggest that the implicit activation of national cues has far‐reaching implications on political thought and behavior as well as on attitudes toward minorities. Under the assumption that the image of national flags is associated in memory with national ideologies, these results suggest that national ideologies can be implicitly pursued in a way that significantly affects our thoughts and behaviors.

Prospection by Any Other Name? A Response to Seligman et al. (2013)

We stand in agreement with Seligman et al. (2013, this issue) that prospection is an important psychological process, but we disagree that it has been neglected within the psychological literature. We further question some of the broader claims made by the authors regarding conscious decision making and free will. We argue that future-oriented cognition is fully consistent with deterministic accounts of cognition, including automaticity, and that prospection does little to advance the position of free will.

Resisting Temptation: Tracking How Self-Control Conflicts Are Successfully Resolved in Real Time:

Across four studies, we used mouse tracking to identify the dynamic, on-line cognitive processes that underlie successful self-control decisions. First, we showed that individuals display real-time conflict when choosing options consistent with their long-term goal over short-term temptations. Second, we found that individuals who are more successful at self-control—whether measured or manipulated—show significantly less real-time conflict in only self-control-relevant choices. Third, we demonstrated that successful individuals who choose a long-term goal over a short-term temptation display movements that are smooth rather than abrupt, which suggests dynamic rather than stage-based resolution of self-control conflicts. These findings have important implications for contemporary theories of self-control.

Reversing Implicit First Impressions through Reinterpretation after a Two-Day Delay

People are adept at forming impressions of others, but how easily can impressions be updated? Although implicit first impressions have been characterized as difficult to overturn, recent work shows that they can be reversed through reinterpretation of earlier learning. However, such reversal has been demonstrated only in the same experimental session in which the impression formed, suggesting that implicit updating might be possible only within a brief temporal window, before impressions are consolidated and when memory about the initial information is strongest. Implicit impressions may be unable to be revised when reinterpreting details are learned later, due to memory consolidation or forgetting of the details to be reinterpreted. This study tested whether implicit first impressions can be reversed through reinterpretation after a two-day delay following the initial formation. Results showed that implicit revision emerged after the delay, even among those with poor explicit recall or who were not cued to recall. We discuss implications for theory on impression formation and updating.

Social-psychological evidence for the effective updating of implicit attitudes

Recent findings in social psychology show how implicit affective responses can be changed, leading to strong, fast, and durable updating. This work demonstrates that new information viewed as diagnostic or which prompts reinterpretations of previous learning produces fast revision, suggesting two factors that might be leveraged in clinical settings. Reconsolidation provides a plausible route for making such reasoning possible.