Abstract

The sexual objectification of women in the media and the supposedly negative effects of pornography on male attitudes towards women are regularly debated. Yet one major flaw of the pornography effects literature is the over-reliance on self-report or “explicit” attitudinal measures, rather than on more direct (e.g. implicit) measures of cognition. Furthermore, the stability and malleability of implicit cognitions remains unclear, and it is not yet known whether beliefs can be primed and are context dependent, or whether they are more closely aligned with so-called state-like constructs. The aim of this on-going research is to explore whether implicit cognitions toward women can be primed through exposure to various media depictions of women, using the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) as the primary outcome measure.