Melissa Burkley

Oklahoma State University - Stillwater | Oklahoma State · Department of Psychology

A common metaphor used to describe heterosexual relationships frames men as predators and women as prey. The present work assessed potential consequences of these metaphoric portrayals. Participants read a heterosexual dating scenario that did or did not metaphorically frame the situation in predator and prey terms. Using a U.S. college undergradua...

Across three experiments, participants were provided with a list of racist behaviors that purportedly were enacted from a fellow student but in fact were based on the participants' own behaviors. People consistently evaluated themselves as less racist than this comparison other, even though this other's racist behaviors were identical to their own....

People constantly experience a tug‐of‐war between their self‐control on one end and their temptations on the other. Although a great deal of research has examined such self‐control dilemmas, much of it has focused on the “push” of self‐control rather than the “pull” of temptations. To facilitate future work on this latter construct, we sought to cr...

Masculine self-concept refers to a man's psychological sense of being male. In this study, we used the Semantic Misattribution Procedure to assess men's implicit masculine self-concept. As expected, implicit masculine self-concept was not associated with social desirability, but was positively associated with several gender-relevant outcomes, inclu...

Stereotypic backhanded compliments are defined as compliments that praise a stigmatized individual for violating a negative stereotype (e.g., "You're smart, for a woman."). Although commonly used in everyday language, few studies have examined these comments empirically. As such, the purpose of the present work was twofold. First, we sought to dete...

Objectives: Prejudice against Native Americans as an overall group generally polarizes into positive and negative stereotypic extremes, but distinct subgroups may explain this variability. Method: Using college student samples (Study 1), a preliminary study identified common Native American subgroups and then a main study (N = 153, 74% women, 73...

For over 50 years a debate has existed over the use of Native American sport mascots; however, few empirical studies on the topic exist. The present study examined if supraliminal exposure to Native American mascots results in the application of negative stereotypes toward Native American people. Results indicated that the effect of Native American...

Prior work has shown that women use gender stereotypes to excuse their stereotypic failures and doing so incurs negative costs. This study examined if the audience who witnesses a woman using such a stereotypic excuse also incurs costs, in the form of increased gender stereotype endorsement. Male and female participants reviewed a survey supposedly...

Goal fusion refers to the perception that a goal is integrated within one's self-concept. We created a new measure of goal fusion and examined how incremental differences in such fusion results in positive and negative goal-relevant consequences. A pilot study supported the measure's test-retest reliability. Study 1 found that goal fusion uniquely...

This article reports the development and psychometric properties of the Masculinity Contingency Scale (MCS), a measure designed to assess the extent that a man's self-worth is derived from his sense of masculinity. Across 4 studies, results provided support for this new measure's reliability and validity. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyse...

The impact of negative stereotypes can be harmful, and as a result, stigmatized targets are often motivated to deny their accuracy. However, at times, targets of even the most unflattering stereotypes embrace them as valid. Early stigma researchers conceptualized this self-stereotyping as a form of internalized self-hatred. However, within the last...

This article aims to bridge the circadian and self-control literatures by suggesting that people's self-control performance varies as a function of their circadian preferences (i.e., chronotype). We review evidence for this assertion across a wide range of self-control domains, including cognitive processing, emotion regulation, interpersonal relat...

Storybook tales, movies, and beauty magazines often communicate the message that beauty is malleable. Malleable beliefs are generally found to be beneficial, but this is not the case in the beauty domain. Across two studies, we found that the “beauty is malleable” belief puts women (but not men) at risk for harmful appearance concerns, such as basi...

The extent to which we see ourselves as similar or different from others in our lives plays a key role in getting along and participating in social life. This volume identifies research relevant to such communal functions of social comparisons and summarizes and organizes this research within a single, coherent conceptual framework. The volume prov...

Stereotype lift is defined as a boost in performance caused by an awareness of a positive ingroup stereotype. This study investigated if gay men experience stereotype lift in the fashion domain. To date, no studies have examined stereotype lift in regards to stereotypes about sexual orientation or in regards to a non-academic task. To address this...

Constructs typically used to understand commitment between individuals were used to elucidate individual differences in goal commitment. In Study 1, 299 college students completed assessments of goal satisfaction, investments, alternatives and commitment regarding an academic goal. Structural equation modeling demonstrated confirmatory evidence for...

A recent study of the affect misattribution procedure (AMP) found that participants who retrospectively reported that they intentionally rated the primes showed larger effect sizes and higher reliability. The study concluded that the AMP's validity depends on intentionally rating the primes. We evaluated this conclusion in three experiments. First,...

The present work examined the negative consequences that result when stigmatized individuals endorse negative in-group stereotypes after failure. Study 1 found that women given the opportunity to blame their math failure on the stereotype "women are bad at math" showed higher stereotype endorsement, exerted less effort on a subsequent math test, an...

People from honor-oriented societies emphasize the maintenance and defense of reputation. Prior research has used geographical distinctions or self-report scales to identify honor-oriented regions and people. The current study examined if honor orientations can be assessed at an implicit level through the use of the Affect Misattribution Procedure...

Video games often offer players a chance to visit fantastical places that could never exist in reality. However, these interactions are related to and can influence how one perceives the real world. Research has primarily focused on the relationship between violent video games and aggression, but there is another aspect of video games that could in...

We examined the association between playing sexist video games and sexist attitudes. Undergraduate students (61 men and 114 women) indicated the level of perceived sexism present in their most frequently played video games. Students also completed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick & Fiske, 1996), which measures both hostile and benevolent sexi...

a b s t r a c t This study examined if women's beliefs regarding the malleability of traits influences their tendency to disengage from the math domain following failure. As predicted, women who believed their math skills were fixed and unchangeable showed less math identification and less interest in math tasks than women who believed their math s...

Are women more interested in men who are already in a relationship? Female and male participants who were single or in a relationship viewed information about an opposite-sex other and indicated their interest in pursuing this target. Half of the participants were told that the target was single and half read that the target was currently in a rela...

be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be co...

be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be co...

Applied social psychology combines the science of social psychology with the practical application of solving social problems that exist in the real world. This exciting textbook provides a thorough explanation of how social psychologists can contribute to the understanding and management of different social problems. A highly prestigious team of c...

Implicit and explicit attitude tests are often weakly correlated, leading some theorists to conclude that implicit and explicit cognition are independent. Popular implicit and explicit tests, however, differ in many ways beyond implicit and explicit cognition. The authors examined in 4 studies whether correlations between implicit and explicit test...

This work examined if stigmatized targets will embrace negative in-group stereotypes in order to protect their self-esteem from the threat of stereotypic failures. All studies focused on the stereotype that women have lower math ability than men. In Study 1, women who failed a math test showed buffered self-esteem if they were first given the oppor...

Proposes deviance regulation theory to explain the apparent reinforcing effect of deviant behavior on oneself and one's peers. These authors argue that adolescents in particular struggle to establish an identity that conforms to the values of peers, but simultaneously differentiates from peers enough to maintain uniqueness. The deviance regulation...

The tendency to view the self as a prototypic member of a group is thought to be at the foundation of many social psychological phenomena. Two opposing accounts of perceived prototypicality have been suggested in the psychological literature. The self-justification account portrays this as a defensive tendency that occurs in response to threatened...

A novel sentence completion task was developed to assess how individuals view themselves and others in differ-ent domains of experience. This task was incorp orated into a repertory grid and evaluated in two studies. In the first study, ratings obtained from the grid procedure were shown to be internally consistent and reliable over time in two dis...

Typescript. Thesis (M.S.)--Psychology, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, 2001. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 39-42). Photocopy.