Sexual Objectification Increases Rape Victim Blame and Decreases Perceived Suffering

Sexual objectification changes the way people view women by reducing them to sexual objects—denied humanity and an internal mental life, as well as deemed unworthy of moral concern. However, the subsequent consequences of sexually objectifying others remain underresearched. In the current study, we examined the impact of objectification in the domain of sexual assault. Sixty British undergraduate students were recruited to complete an impression formation task. We manipulated objectification by presenting participants with either a sexualized or nonsexualized woman. Participants rated the woman’s mind and the extent to which they felt moral concern for her. They then learned that she was the victim of an acquaintance rape and reported victim blame and both blatant and subtle perceptions of her suffering. Consistent with prior research, sexualized women were objectified through a denial of mental states and moral concern. Further, compared with nonobjectified women, the objectified were perceived to be more responsible for being raped. Interestingly, although no difference emerged for blatant measures of suffering, participants tacitly denied the victims’ suffering by exhibiting changes in moral concern for the victim. We conclude that objectification has important consequences for how people view victims of sexual assault. Our findings reveal that sexual objectification can have serious consequences and we discuss how these might influence how victims cope and recover from sexual assault

Carnero, Guillermo: Estudios sobre teatro español del siglo XVIII

Review of: Carnero, Guillermo. Estudios sobre teatro español del siglo XVIII. Zaragoza, Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 1997, 310 pp

Automated Pilot Advisory System

An Automated Pilot Advisory System (APAS) was developed and operationally tested to demonstrate the concept that low cost automated systems can provide air traffic and aviation weather advisory information at high density uncontrolled airports. The system was designed to enhance the see and be seen rule of flight, and pilots who used the system preferred it over the self announcement system presently used at uncontrolled airports

Gothic Larra

Mariano José de Larra’s scathing review of Dumas’s Antony often is cited as evidence of his disapproval of the aesthetic excesses characteristic of Romantic productions.1 Comparatively few critics have remarked on Larra’s special disregard for the conventions of Romantic works we tend to classify as “Gothic”—texts and performances that expressly seek responses such as fear or horror.2 For example, he disdained Ducange’s El verdugo de Amsterdam particularly because (as he wrote in a review) that play makes audiences “llorar como haría llorar a cualquiera una paliza” (395), without appeal to an audience’s deeper moral and intellectual capacities. Though he was a friend of the theatrical impresario Juan de Grimaldi, Larra saw much popular literature and entertainment as betraying the (enlightened, progressive, patriotic) writer’s obligation to develop readers’ and viewers’ critical faculties.3 Yet (as he so often pointed out in his articles), Larra himself labored under a weekly obligation to attract readers’ attention, and it was not easy to appeal to a people who saw things “de tan distinta manera” (“El castellano viejo” 119) and whose preoccupations—with appearance, display, social standing—were illusory at best

Disgust as embodied moral judgment.

How, and for whom, does disgust influence moral judgment? In four experiments participants made moral judgments while experiencing extraneous feelings of disgust. Disgust was induced in Experiment 1 by exposure to a bad smell, in Experiment 2 by working in a disgusting room, in Experiment 3 by recalling a physically disgusting experience, and in Experiment 4 through a video induction. In each case, the results showed that disgust can increase the severity of moral judgments relative to controls. Experiment 4 found that disgust had a different effect on moral judgment than did sadness. In addition, Experiments 2-4 showed that the role of disgust in severity of moral judgments depends on participants' sensitivity to their own bodily sensations. Taken together, these data indicate the importance-and specificity-of gut feelings in moral judgments

Probing the Perturbative NLO Parton Evolution in the Small-xx Region

A dedicated test of the perturbative QCD NLO parton evolution in the very small-$x$ region is performed. We find a good agreement with recent precision HERA-data for $F_2^p(x,Q^2)$, as well as with the present determination of the curvature of $F_2^p$. Characteristically, perturbative QCD evolutions result in a positive curvature which increases as $x$ decreases. Future precision measurements in the very small $x$-region, $x<10^{-4}$, could provide a sensitive test of the range of validity of perturbative QCDComment: Revised version, to appear in EPJ

Majos, the “españolísimo gremio” of eighteenth-century popular theatre: casticismo, unsettledness and abjection

Los majos del teatro dieciochesco popular de Madrid se enorgullecían de su casticismo, o de su genuina “españolidad” (en oposición a “extranjeridad”). Sin embargo, desde el inicio de su formulación literaria, los majos refieren al público de teatro a las luchas subyacentes al cosmopolitismo urbano, tales como la inmigración, la pobreza, el desplazamiento, y lo que Fumerton califica como unsettledness, una condición de inestabilidad que caracterizaba la vida de un sinnúmero de personas en el ámbito urbano capitalino. Paradójicamente, dos características esenciales de su “españolidad” son la marginalización y la inestabilidad de los majos de Madrid. Los majos son a la vez familiares y extranjeros, centrales y periféricos; y a este respecto, haré valer la noción de “lo abyecto” propuesta por Kristeva. Así, los majos configuran una abyección inherente a la construcción cultural de la comunidad “castiza” madrileña en el pasado.The majos of Madrid’s eighteenth-century popular theatre were proud of their casticismo, or genuine ‘Spanishness’ (as opposed to ‘foreignness’). However, from their inception in literature, majos refer audiences to the struggles underlying urban cosmopolitanism, such as immigration, poverty, displacement, and what Fumerton terms ‘unsettledness’, a condition of instability characterizing the lives of countless persons in the capital’s urban environment. Paradoxically, two essential characteristics of the ‘Spanishness’ of Madrid’s majos are their marginalization and unsettledness. I draw on Kristeva’s notion of ‘abjection’ to approach some of the ways in which majos are at the same time familiar and foreign/ different, central and marginal, and argue that majos configure an abjection inherent in the cultural construction of ‘castizo’ community belonging during the past

Analysis of Electroweak Precision Data and Prospects for Future Improvements

We update our previous work on an analysis of the electroweak data by including new and partly preliminary data available up to the 1996 summer conferences. The new results on the Z partial decay widths into b and c hadrons now offer a consistent interpretation of all data in the minimal standard model. The value extracted for the strong interaction coupling constant \alpha_s(mZ) agrees well with determinations in other areas. New constraints on the universal parameters S, T and U are obtained from the updated measurements. No signal of new physics is found in the S,T,U analysis once the SM contributions with mt \sim 175GeV and those of not a too heavy Higgs boson are accounted for. The naive QCD-like technicolor model is now ruled out at the 99%CL even for the minimal model with SU(2)_{TC}. In the absence of a significant new physics effect in the electroweak observables, constraints on masses of the top quark, mt, and Higgs boson, mH, are derived as a function of \alpha_s and the QED effective coupling $\bar{\alpha}(m_Z^2)$. The preferred range of mH depends rather strongly on the actual value of mt: mH<360 GeV for mt=170GeV, while mH>130GeV for mt=180GeV at 95%CL. Prospects due to forthcoming improved measurements of asymmetries, the mass of the weak boson W mW, mt and $\bar{\alpha}(m_Z^2)$ are discussed. Anticipating uncertainties of 0.00020 for \sbar^2(m_Z^2), 20MeV for mW, and 2GeV for mt, the new physics contributions to the S,T,U parameters will be constrained more severely, and, within the SM, the logarithm of the Higgs mass can be constrained to about +-0.35. The better constraints on S,T,U and on mH within the minimal SM should be accompanied with matching precision in $\bar{\alpha}(m_Z^2)$.Comment: 48 pages, Latex, uses axodraw.sty, 32 Postscript figures, to be published in Z.Phys.