title: Automatic female dehumanization across the menstrual cycle.
abstract: In this study, we investigate whether hormonal shifts during the menstrual cycle contribute to the dehumanization of other women and men. Female participants with different levels of likelihood of conception (LoC) completed a semantic priming paradigm in a lexical decision task. When the word 'woman' was the prime, animal words were more accessible in high versus low LoC whereas human words were more inhibited in the high versus low LoC. When the word 'man' was used as the prime, no difference was found in terms of accessibility between high and low LoC for either animal or human words. These results show that the female dehumanization is automatically elicited by menstrual cycle-related processes and likely associated with an enhanced activation of mate-attraction goals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Italy.
authors.forename: Valentina
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9963-2742
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Piccoli
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Italy.
authors.forename: Carlo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fantoni
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Australian Catholic University, Strathfield, NSW, Australia.|Internation School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Trieste, Italy.
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Foroni
authors.affiliation: COPELABS - Lusófona University, Lisbon, Portugal.
authors.forename: Mauro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bianchi
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Italy.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Carnaghi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003657:Decision Making; D032981:Dehumanization; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008597:Menstrual Cycle / Q000523:psychology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011930:Reaction Time; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: attractiveness; automaticity; dehumanization; lexical decision task; menstrual cycle