In the current study we address the role of hormonal
fluctuations across menstrual cycle in female dehumanization
of women and men. Using a sequential priming procedure in a
lexical decision task, we test whether increased levels of
conception risk lead to dehumanization of other women and
men on both animal and human dimensions. Results showed
that for word woman as the prime, animal words were more
accessible in the high than in the low conception risk of the
menstrual cycle; whereas human words were more inhibited
in the high compared to the low conception risk. As for word
man prime, no difference in terms of accessibility was found
between the high and the low conception risk on both animaland
human-words. This study demonstrates that
dehumanization of women is automatically elicited by
menstrual cycle–related processes and associated with
women’s mate-attraction goals.
