Disaggregating the dataAnalysing experimental results by sex and/or gender is critical for improving accuracy and avoiding misinterpretation of data (Fig.

Previous research on gender effects in robots has largely ignored the role of facial cues. We fill this gap in the literature by experimentally investigating the effects of facial gender cues on stereotypical trait and application ascriptions to robots. As predicted, the short‐haired male robot was perceived as more agentic than was the long‐haired female robot, whereas the female robot was perceived as more communal than was the male counterpart. Analogously, stereotypically male tasks were perceived more suitable for the male robot, relative to the female robot, and vice versa. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that gender stereotypes, which typically bias social perceptions of humans, are even applied to robots. Implications for design‐related decisions are discussed.

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Previous work on social categorization has shown that people often use cues such as a person's gender, age, or ethnicity to categorize and form impressions of others. The present research investigated effects of social category membership on the evaluation of humanoid robots. More specifically, participants rated a humanoid robot that either belonged to their in-group or to a national out-group with regard to anthropomorphism (e.g., mind attribution, warmth), psychological closeness, contact intentions, and design. We predicted that participants would show an in-group bias towards the robot that ostensibly belonged to their in-group--as indicated by its name and location of production. In line with our hypotheses, participants not only rated the in-group robot more favourably--importantly, they also anthropomorphized it more strongly than the out-group robot. Our findings thus document that people even apply social categorization processes and subsequent differential social evaluations to robots.

Heightened temporary accessibility of men's rape myth acceptance (RMA) increases the correlation between RMA and rape proclivity (RP), suggesting a causal impact of RMA on RP (G. Bohner et al., 1998). We additionally examined previous sexual coercion as an indicator of chronic accessibility of RMA. In Study 1 (N ¼ 107), the correlation between RMA and RP was higher: (a) if RMA was assessed before (versus after) RP; and (b) for men who had previously engaged in sexual coercion compared with men who had not. In Study 2 (N ¼ 148), sexually coercive men were faster answering RMA items than were noncoercive men. Taken together, these findings indicate that the temporary and chronic accessibility of RMA independently affect the RMA-RP link. Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The belief in rape myths is one prominent cause of sexual violence. Men's acceptance of such myths, which serve to deny, trivialize, or justify male sexual violence against women (Bohner, 1998;Burt, 1980), correlates positively with men's rape proclivity (e.g. Malamuth, 1981). Recent research revealed that rape myth acceptance (RMA) predicts judgments of victim blame and rape proclivity (RP) within the same sample of men (e.g. Abrams, Viki, Masser, & Bohner, 2003), suggesting that the justification of sexual violence may go hand in hand with a certain readiness to commit such violence.To examine the causal pathway underlying the correlation between RMA and RP, Bohner et al. (1998) manipulated the relative accessibility of each construct by asking men to complete an RMA scale either before or after completing an RP measure. They reasoned that a potential causal variable such as RMA can exert an effect on behavioral intentions only to the extent that it is cognitively accessible-the relationship between RMA and RP should thus be heightened if the causal variable is made accessible before assessing the variable that is causally affected (cf. Schwarz & Strack, 1981). Their results showed that the correlation of RMA and RP was significantly higher when participants completed the RMA scale first rather than last, indicating a causal impact of RMA on RP.