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British Journal of Psychology (2011) 2011 The British Psychological Society

The British Psychological Society

www.wileyonlinelibrary.com

Lights on at the end of the party: Are lads mags mainstreaming dangerous sexism?
Miranda A. H. Horvath1, , Peter Hegarty2 , Suzannah Tyler2 and Sophie Manseld2
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Department of Psychology, Middlesex University, UK University of Surrey, UK

Research has suggested that some magazines targeted at young men lads mags are normalizing extreme sexist views by presenting those views in a mainstream context. Consistent with this view, young men in Study 1 (n = 90) identied more with derogatory quotes about women drawn from recent lads mags, and from interviews with convicted rapists, when those quotes were attributed to lads mags, than when they were attributed to convicted rapists. In Study 2, 40 young women and men could not reliably judge the source of those same quotes. While these participants sometimes voiced the belief that the content of lads mags was normal while rapists talk was extreme, they categorized quotes from both sources as derogatory with equal frequency. Jointly, the two studies show an overlap in the content of convicted rapists talk and the contents of contemporary lads mags, and suggest that the framing of such content within lads mags may normalize it for young men.

Its not our job to educate people . . . . Mens magazines if anything are the opposite of that were the good time. If you mention to people about gonorrhoea and syphilis it ruins the fun. Its lights on at the end of the party (Martin Daubney, 2007).

Many social scientists think that repeated exposure to magazine content inuences perceptions of social reality (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1994; Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, Signorielli, & Shanahan, 2002). Magazine content can lead to the development of new schemas (Huesmann, 1997, 1998) and the priming of old ones (Ward, 2003). The inuence of magazines on behaviour is particularly important with regard to the sexual practices of young people, because adolescents cite magazines as their favoured and most dependable resource for sexual information (Treise & Gotthoffer, 2002; Walsh & Ward, 2010, see also Papadopoulos, 2010). Such inuences can be negative; young boys are more likely to identify women as sex objects when they have been exposed to sexualized media than when they have not been so exposed (Peter & Valkenburg, 2007).
Correspondence should be addressed to Miranda A. H. Horvath, Forensic Psychological Services, Department of Psychology, Middlesex University, The Town Hall, The Burroughs, London NW4 4BT, UK (e-mail: m.horvath@mdx.ac.uk).
DOI:10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02086.x

Miranda A. H. Horvath et al.

The present research builds on such ndings by examining some kinds of sexist views that can be easily found in the pages of contemporary lads mags aimed at young male readers. Lads mags are relatively new media that are readily found alongside other mainstream magazines in newsagents and supermarkets across the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia (Coy & Horvath, 2011). Lads mags initially captured a diverse market characterized by the desire for more traditional upmarket lifestyle magazines for men (e.g., GQ, Esquire). Cheaper weeklies such as Zoo and Nuts have since appeared with lower production values and with content about less globally famous female celebrities (Mooney, 2008). However, over the last 1015 years, the distinctions between genres have lessened with even the more upmarket titles becoming increasingly reliant on (hetero)sexualized imagery and a more hedonistic predatory construction of masculinity (Coy & Horvath, 2011, p. 145; see also Attwood, 2005; Benwell, 2004; Crewe, 2003; Stevenson, Jackson, & Brooks, 2003). While psychologists have often studied how pornography socializes derogatory attitudes towards women among young male viewers (e.g., Bensimon, 2007; Mackay & Covell, 1997; Malamuth, Addison, & Koss, 2000), the lack of total nudity in lads mags prevents lads mags from being classied as pornographic (Krassas, Blauwkamp, & Wesselink, 2003). Yet, researchers who have analysed the contents of lads mags in depth have concluded that magazines such as Maxim and Stuff script sex such that women are sexual objects, whose sexual satisfaction is of secondary importance to mens (Krassas et al., 2003). Women are often depicted in lads mags in states of undress, as victims of sexual coercion and male dominance, and in faux lesbian erotic poses, as in pornography, aimed at the straight male viewer (Taylor, 2005). Lads mags often advise young men to get drunk, fake sincerity to young women, and zone in on vulnerable women for sexual conquest (Krassas et al., 2001, 2003; see also Farvid & Braun, 2006; Lambaise, 2007; Taylor, 2005). Cover lines and images in lads mags advocate easy sex without intimacy (Johnson, 2007). Lads mags present traditional gender role expectations that women ought to satisfy men sexually (Viki & Abrams, 2002). They present sex and relationship issues through silence, inappropriate advice, or humour (Johnson, 2007). Thus, if taken at face value, lads mags appear likely to teach young men sexist attitudes and practices (Horvath, Coy, & Murray, 2010) as more sexually explicit pornography is known to do (Bensimon, 2007; Mackay & Covell, 1997; Malamuth et al., 2000). Editors of lads mags often urge people not to take their magazines contents at face value. For example, Martin Daubney, the former editor of popular UK lads mag Loaded dismissed the possibility that magazines do or should educate young people about sex. Sexist content in lads mags is often characterized as merely ironic (Benwell, 2003; McKay, Mikosza, & Hutchins, 2005) allowing editors to negate the possibility that their magazines inuence readers, and to counter-argue that their critics have simply missed the intended joke (Jackson, Stevenson, & Brooks, 2001). However, the denition of irony is inherently subjective; the same comment can be attributed a literal intended meaning or an ironic intended meaning. Irony is not gender-neutral; men are more likely to use irony than women, and the same comment is more likely to be interpreted as ironic if attributed to a man than a woman (Colston & Lee, 2004; Katz, Blasko, & Kazmerski, 2004). Sexist humour may be interpreted as harmless irony by some men and not by others. For example, men who are more sexist nd sexist jokes funnier (Eyssel & Bohner, 2007) and disparaging humour about women creates a context in which the expression of sexism becomes the social norm (Ford & Ferguson, 2004; Romero-Snchez, Durn, a a Carretero-Dios, Megias, & Moya, 2010). For these reasons, editors claims about the social

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consequences of the content of lads mags ought not themselves to be taken at face value. Indeed, on occasion, the advice offered to readers of lads mags has been so unambiguously violent in its prescriptions as to prompt controversy and retraction. In May 2010 the celebrity agony uncle, Danny Dyer, in the UK-based lads mag Zoo, advised a 23-year-old man who wrote to ask for advice about how to get over a past relationship to cut your exs face, and then no one will want her (Buseld & Sweney, 2010). Dyer was forced to apologize, and Zoo staff blamed the advice on a production error (Buseld & Sweney, 2010). Because sexist ironic humour in lads mags can address such real-world issues as rape, human trafcking, and prostitution (Lanis & Covell, 1995), we asked the question of whether lads mags may affect readers norms, making extreme forms of sexism appear more acceptable to them. Like the editors of lads mags who blame egregious sexism on production errors, or minimize its effects as mere ironic humour, rapists are known to use techniques of neutralization that justify and motivate their actions (Gilbert & Webster, 1982). For example, rapists learn a culturally derived vocabulary of motive that diminishes their responsibility, and normalizes their behaviour. Rapists blame women for their own victimization by describing women as seductresses, by claiming that no means yes, by arguing that most women eventually relax and enjoy it and by insisting that nice girls do not get raped (Scully & Marolla, 1984). As men who have mastered this vocabulary of diminished responsibility, convicted rapists have much to tell us about how sexual violence becomes possible and how it gets normalized (Scully, 1990). In other words, it appears that lads mags and rapists might share the commonality of using techniques to neutralize derogatory sexism. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that when rapists are convicted they are unlikely to remain legitimate sources of social inuence. In contrast, lads mags are a normalized legitimate source of information, available in the marketplace, and only sometimes positioned on the top shelf (Mooney, 2008, p. 250; Taylor, 2005). The present research addressed the possibility that lads mags may be normalizing sexist opinions that would otherwise be perceived as illegitimate; the normalizations of violence against women voiced by convicted rapists. Each of the two studies addresses a hypothesis relevant to this research question. In Study 1, we tested the hypothesis that attributing derogatory sexist comments to lads mags makes it easier for young men to identify with such content. In Study 2, we tested the hypothesis that young women and men will struggle to distinguish the strategies of legitimation voiced by convicted rapists and similar descriptions of women presented as harmless humour in lads mags. Jointly, these studies inform the question of whether such advice as Danny Dyers was truly exceptional, or if the legitimate mainstream lads mags genre more routinely contains examples of blatant sexist views in its pages such that its range of content is difcult to completely distinguish from the talk of convicted rapists.

STUDY 1: IDENTIFICATION WITH LADS MAGS AND RAPISTS OPINIONS ABOUT WOMEN
Study 1 aimed to determine whether young men would identify more with sexist quotes about women when those quotes were attributed to lads mags rather than to convicted rapists. We measured young mens identication with quotes about women drawn from contemporary lads mags and from interviews with convicted rapists. We predicted that

Miranda A. H. Horvath et al.

men would identify more with quotes of both sorts under conditions where those quotes were attributed to lads mags rather than to rapists. We also predicted that more sexist men would identify with quotes drawn from both sources overall. Of course, convicted rapists say many things in interviews that are not inherently sexist, and lads mags contain much content that is unrelated to sexism also. We included both the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI, Glick & Fiske, 1996) and the Acceptance of Modern Myths about Sexual Aggression Scale (AMMSA, Gerger, Kley, Bohner, & Siebler, 2007) to further validate our assumption that identication with the quotes we selected would be evidence of sexism. The ASI measures both negatively valenced (hostile) and positively valenced (benevolent) sexist beliefs about women, and previous research has shown that hostile sexists endorse rape myths to a greater extent (Yamawaki, 2007) and that hostile sexist men nd it easier to identify with a rapist in a story about acquaintance rape because they assume that the victim really wanted sex (Abrams, Viki, Masser, & Bohner, 2003). While benevolent sexists are quicker to blame the victim of an acquaintance rape for her own fate (Abrams et al., 2003) and to recommend a more lenient penalty for a man who commits acquaintance rape (Viki, Abrams, & Masser, 2004), we aimed to select quotes that were derogatory towards women and predicted that endorsement of those quotes would be particularly well predicted by hostile sexism. We also included a measure of rape myths; descriptive or prescriptive beliefs about rape (i.e., about its causes, context, consequences, perpetrators, victims and their interaction) that serve to deny, downplay or justify sexual violence that men commit against women (Bohner, 1998, p. 14). The array of scales developed to measure rape myth acceptance (RMA) (e.g., Burt, 1980; Costin, 1985; Field, 1978; Payne, Lonsway, & Fitzgerald, 1999) have tended to use blatant and colloquial items formulations, producing severely positively skewed distributions (Gerger et al., 2007). The AMSSA is a more subtle measure of RMA that builds on the recognition that sexism is typically expressed in subtle ways that can be disavowed later on in modern societies (Glick & Fiske, 1996; Swim, Aikin, Hall, & Hunter, 1995).

Method
Participants An opportunistic sample of 92 men aged 1846 years (M = 22.70; SD = 4.09) from a UK university was recruited face-to-face at public campus venues (n = 45) via a recruitment e-mail (n = 41) and recruitment posters (n = 6). Participants identied their race/ethnicity in their own words as White British (n = 54), White (n = 22), British (n = 5), British Indian (n = 2), English (n = 2), and one each as Asian, Black, Black African, British, Caucasian, White Asian, and White European. The men described their relationship status as single (n = 42), in a relationship (n = 44), engaged (n = 2), or married (n = 4), and their sexual orientation as heterosexual (n = 90) or bisexual (n = 2). Materials The materials consisted of a questionnaire with several pages. The rst page assessed identication with derogatory views about women expressed in lads mags and by convicted rapists. We limited our search for the lads mags items to a total of 12 editions of four different lads mags with the highest circulation gures in the United

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Table 1. Quotes sourced from lads mags and from convicted rapists used as stimuli in Studies 1 and 2

Quotes sourced from convicted rapists

1 2 3 4 5 6 Theres a certain way you can tell that a girl wants to have sex . . . The way they dress, they aunt themselves. Some girls walk around in short-shorts . . . showing their body off . . . It just starts a man thinking that if he gets something like that, what can he do with it? . . . What burns me up sometimes about girls is dick-teasers. They lead a man on and then shut him off right there. You know girls in general are all right. But some of them are bitches . . . The bitches are the type that . . . need to have it stuffed to them hard and heavy. Youll nd most girls will be reluctant about going to bed with somebody or crawling in the back seat of a car . . . But you can usually seduce them, and theyll do it willingly. Girls ask for it by wearing these mini-skirts and hotpants . . . theyre just displaying their body . . . Whether they realise it or not theyre saying, Hey, Ive got a beautiful body, and its yours if you want it. Some women are domineering, but I think its more or less the man who should put his foot down. The man is supposed to be the man. If he acts the man, the woman wont be domineering I think if a law is passed, there should be a dress code . . . When girls dress in those short skirts and things like that, theyre just asking for it.

Quotes sourced from lads mags

1 A girl may like anal sex because it makes her feel incredibly naughty and she likes feeling like a dirty slut. If this is the case, you can try all sorts of humiliating acts to help live out her lthy fantasy. Mascara running down the cheeks means theyve just been crying, and it was probably your fault . . . but you can cheer up the miserable beauty with a bit of the old in and out. Filthy talk can be such a turn on for a girl . . . no one wants to be shagged by a mouse . . . A few compliments wont do any harm either . . . I bet you want it from behind you dirty whore . . . Escorts . . . they know exactly how to turn a man on. Ive given up on girlfriends. They dont know how to satisfy me, but escorts do. Theres nothing quite like a woman standing in the dock accused of murder in a sex game gone wrong . . . The possibility of murder does bring a certain frisson to the bedroom. You do not want to be caught red-handed . . . go and smash her on a park bench. That used to be my trick. Girls love being tied up . . . it gives them the chance to be the helpless victim. I think girls are like plasticine, if you warm them up you can do anything you want with them.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Kingdom, which were published between January and March 2010; Nuts, Zoo, Loaded, and FHM (circulation data derived from www.abc.org.uk). We extracted eight short quotes from editorials and articles. We selected the eight convicted rapist items from verbatim interview transcripts with convicted incarcerated rapists in the United States contained in the book The Rapist File: Interviews with Convicted Rapists (Sussman & Bordwell, 2000). All quotes are listed verbatim in Table 1. Each of the 16 items was presented as a 7-point Likert item, which asked men to indicate their identication with the quote from 1 (do not identify at all) to 7 (identify strongly). We averaged participants identication with quotes from each source to form reliable measures of identication with the lads mags and convicted rapist items (Cronbachs = .81, 0.88, respectively).

Miranda A. H. Horvath et al.

Participants completed one of three different versions of this questionnaire that established the experimental design of this study. In the correctly attributed version of the questionnaire, all 16 quotes were correctly identied as having been sourced from lads mags or from interviews with convicted rapists. In the incorrectly attributed version, the quotes drawn from lads mags were attributed to convicted rapists and the quotes drawn from convicted rapists were attributed to lads mags. The unattributed version did not indicate the source of any of the quotes. These three conditions allowed us to test our principal prediction that men would identify more any given quote when that quote was attributed to lads mags, and less when that quote was attributed to convicted rapists. The identication items were followed by several measures that did not vary by experimental condition. The rst of these was the ASI (Glick & Fiske, 1996), including 11 items measuring Hostile Sexism (e.g., Women are too easily offended) and 11 items measuring Benevolent Sexism (e.g., A good woman should be set on a pedestal by her man). Participants indicated their agreement with each item from zero (disagree strongly) to ve (agree strongly). We averaged participants agreement with the items to form reliable measures of hostile and benevolent sexism, with higher scores indicating higher sexism (Cronbachs = .88, .82, respectively). Next, the 30 items of the AMMSA that measured contemporary myths about sexual violence were presented (e.g., Because the fascination caused by sex is disproportionately large, our societys sensitivity to crimes in this area is disproportionate as well, Eyssel & Bohner, 2008; Gerger et al., 2007). Items were presented as 7-point Likert items ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 7 (completely agree). Again we averaged scores to form a reliable measure, with higher scores indicating higher myth acceptance (Cronbachs = .95). The third scale presented was a four-item measure of the Perceived Legitimacy of Lads Mags designed for this study. Participants indicated their agreement with Likert items ranging from 0 (disagree strongly) to 5 (agree strongly). This scale was reliable (Cronbachs = 0.86) and its four items read as follows: Lads mags are a positive way of learning about sexual relationships. Reading lads mags is something every young male should do. Lads mags have provided me with accurate and informative information about the opposite sex. Lads mags educate young men accurately on societys gender roles. Finally, participants reported their gender, age, race/ethnicity, relationships status, and sexual orientation.

Procedure Male volunteer participants met the female experimenter in a private room in the psychology department of a UK university. Participants were randomly assigned the correctly attributed, incorrectly attributed, or unattributed condition, and were presented with the materials including the relevant identication questionnaire. The participants then completed the questionnaire in private and submitted it to a locked box. Upon submitting their completed materials, the participants were verbally debriefed, thanked, and presented with an information sheet.

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Results
Our hypotheses assumed that identication with both sorts of quotes would be indicative of sexism. To check this assumption, we examined the relationship between identication with quotes drawn from each source and with measures of sexism. Identication with the quotes drawn from lads mags and from rapists were both highly correlated with hostile sexism, r (91) = .59, .57, respectively, both p < .001, benevolent sexism, r (91) = .23, p < .05, r (91) = .30, p < .01, respectively, AMMSA scores, r (91) = .57, .61, respectively, both p < .001, and our own measure of the Perceived Legitimacy of Lads Mags, r (91) = .49, .58, respectively, both p < .001. Identication with each sort of quote was equivalently correlated with each measure of sexism, (all Fishers Z < 1). Consistent with our assumption that the quotes represented explicitly derogatory content, identication with both kinds of quotes was more strongly correlated with hostile sexism than with benevolent sexism (Fishers Z = 2.87, 2.17 for rapist and lads mags items, respectively, p < .001, p = .03, respectively, both two-tailed). Identication The main hypothesis of this study was that men would identify more with a quote when it was attributed to lads mags, and identify less when that same quote was attributed to convicted rapists. Accordingly, we conducted a 3 2 mixed model ANOVA with quote source (lads mags vs. convicted rapists) as a within-subjects factor and the attribution manipulation as a between-subjects factor (correctly attributed vs. unattributed vs. incorrectly attributed, see Figure 1). Overall, there was no signicant main effect of our attribution manipulation: men identied with the items to the same degree in the correctly labelled, unlabelled, and incorrectly labelled conditions (Ms = 2.84, 2.75, 2.75, respectively) F < 1. There was however a signicant main effect of quote source, surprisingly, men identied signicantly more with quotes that were genuinely drawn

Figure 1. Mean identication with quotes by source and attribution condition, Study 1. Note. Error bars represent standard deviations.

Miranda A. H. Horvath et al.

from interviews with convicted rapists than with quotes that were genuinely drawn from lads mags (M = 3.23, 2.33, respectively; SD = 1.28, 0.99), F(1, 89) = 113.74, p < .001, 2 = .56. We discuss this unexpected nding further below. p A signicant interaction between the attribution manipulation and the quote source 2 conrmed our main hypothesis, F (2, 89) = 15.48, p < .001, p = .26. Figure 1 shows two linear trends demonstrating that men identied most with both kinds of quotes when attributed to lads mags, and least when attributed to convicted rapists. Tukeys post hoc tests ( = .05) showed that men identied more with the quotes drawn from lads mags when those quotes were correctly attributed than when they were incorrectly attributed. Identication with quotes from lads mags that were not attributed was intermediately between these two but not signicantly different from either. Tukeys tests revealed that identication with the quotes drawn from convicted rapists did not signicantly differ by condition.

Discussion
In Study 1, sexist men, particularly hostile sexist men who endorsed modern rape myths, identied most frequently with the quotes we drew from interviews with convicted rapists and contemporary lads mags. These ndings are telling in light of earlier research that hostile sexist men are also quicker to identify with rapist protagonists in vignette studies (Abrams et al., 2003). Previous authors have noted that sexist content is common in lads mags (e.g., Taylor, 2005), but Study 1 shows that young men who are more sexist identify most with the sexist views that can easily be found in such magazines. Conrming our main prediction, young men identied more with hostile sexist quotes about women when those quotes were attributed to lads mags. The effect of the attribution manipulation was signicant for the quotes drawn from lads mags, but not for the quotes drawn from rapists. This nding is consistent with the possibility that lads mags might normalize hostile sexism, because sexism appears more acceptable to young men when lads mags appear to be its source. Unexpectedly, the participants also identied more with the rapists quotes than the lads mags quotes. Jointly these ndings suggest the possibility that the legitimation strategies that rapists deploy when they talk about women are more familiar to these young men than we had anticipated. They also suggest that young men might be unable to correctly detect the source of hostile quotes drawn from lads mags and convicted rapists. Discussion of explanations for these ndings are in the general discussion but it should be noted here that it is plausible the only reason for the main effect we found could be that the quotes we used from convicted rapists were less severe than those extracted from the lads mags. Study 2 examined the extent to which people could tell the difference between quotes drawn from the two sources.

STUDY 2: TELLING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LADS MAGS AND RAPISTS VIEWS ABOUT WOMEN
Study 2 aimed to discern whether and how young women and men tell the difference between the content we draw from lads mags and content drawn from interviews with convicted rapists. Study 1 suggested that young men identied with the views of convicted rapists more than they would have liked to have acknowledged. In Study 2,

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women and men were asked to identify the quotes sources and to rank and categorize them according to whether or not they were derogatory towards women.

Method
Participants Twenty women and 20 men (M age = 23.23, SD = 3.46, range = 1930 years) participated as volunteers. The participants identied their race/ethnicity as White British (n = 38) or Mixed Race (n = 2); reported their relationship status as single (n = 13), in a relationship but unmarried (n = 16), engaged to be married (n = 6), or married (n = 5); and reported their sexual identity as heterosexual (n = 40). All participants who were approached consented to take part, and none withdrew from the study at any point. Materials The principal experimental materials were 16 laminated cards, each of which presented one of the 16 quotes used in Study 1 on one side and a unique identifying number on the reverse side. The measure of Perceived Legitimacy of Lads Mags and demographic questionnaire used in Study 1 were also used. A dictaphone recorded participants speech during the sorting tasks and the debrieng. Procedure Participants were recruited following the procedures for snowball sampling described by Breakwell, Hammond, Fife-Schaw, and Smith (2006). Specically, personal contacts of the researcher were asked to introduce the experimenter to people whom they knew and who were unknown to the researcher, who might also be willing to participate as volunteers. Potential participants were informed that the study concerned attitudes towards women that some men might hold, that they would be required to read and consider quotations about women that some people may nd offensive, and that they would have to carry out three card sorting tasks. All participants took part during individual testing sessions in a private room in a university psychology department in the United Kingdom. Once the participant had completed a consent form, the experimenter briefed her or him that there were no right or wrong answers to the questions, and that the participant could voice comments, thoughts, and opinions throughout the procedure, and that these would be tape-recorded and analysed. The experimenter also reminded the participant of the procedures for assuring the condentiality and anonymity of their data, and the tape recording began when the participants were ready to start the study. The experimenter scattered the 16 laminated cards displaying the quotes from Study 1 on a table in front of the participant. The experimenter described the quotes as things that some men had said about women, and asked each participant to carry out three sorting tasks. In the rst degrading continuum participants placed the quotes in order from the most degrading towards women to the least degrading. Second, participants carried out the degrading split task, by categorizing the cards into two groups; those that they considered degrading towards women, and those that they considered not degrading towards women. Finally, the experimenter briefed the participants that some of the quotes were from convicted rapists and others were from popular lads mags, and asked participants to complete the source detection task. In this task, participants

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Table 2. Perceived degradingness and source attributions of all quotes by sorting task (Study 2)1 Degradingness Mean rank Source 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Mean Lads mags 12.15 9.15 8.20 4.45 9.12 11.22 10.05 8.85 9.15 Rapists 7.65 6.15 5.90 11.20 7.53 6.72 8.55 9.10 7.85 Proportion Lads mags .90 .93 .70 .43 .48 .88 .68 .83 .73 Rapists .78 .65 .50 .95 .70 .75 .65 .83 .73 Lads mags .48 .55 .78 .78 .30 .30 .23 .63 .58 Rapists .55 .63 .48 .73 .50 .63 .43 .78 .53 Correct attribution

Note. See Table 1 for verbatim quotes. Rank, mean degradingness rank of quote; proportion, proportion of participating categorizing quote as degrading; correct attribution, proportion of participants correctly detecting the quotes source.

guessed which quotes had been derived from each source, and their guesses were recorded. Next, the experimenter prompted the participant to verbally explain their categorization of the quotes in each of the two piles with the prompts What is it about these quotes that made you think they came from lads mag? and What is it about these quotes that made you think they came from convicted rapists? After the participant completed each of the three tasks, the experimenter recorded the rank accorded to each quote, or the category in which it had been placed, using the cards identication numbers. Participants then completed the measure of Perceived Legitimacy of Lads Mags and the demographic questionnaire, were debriefed verbally, and were thanked for their participation.

Results
Our presentation of the results is divided into two sections. First, we report the statistical analysis of the three card sorting tasks. Next, we describe some themes that emerged from participants guesses during the source detection task. The rst two sorting tasks tested the hypothesis that the two kinds of quotes would be perceived as equally degrading towards women. The mean rank attributed to each quote during the degrading continuum task ranged from 1 to 16 and is shown in Table 2. Higher scores represented a perception of greater degradingness. The mean rank accorded to the eight lads mag

of the means in Table 2 suggests that the participants did not simply use the perceived degradingness of the quotes to attribute their source. Quotes ranked high on the degradingness continuum were categorized as degrading by more participants overall, r (15) = .70, p .001. However, the frequency with which quotes were attributed to convicted rapists was only non-signicantly correlated with both measures of degradingness, r (15) = .42, .31, respectively, both two-tailed p .27. While these ndings must be regarded with caution due to small sample size, they are consistent with the interpretation of the unexpected main effect of the quotes source in Study 1; participants conceive of differences between the content of rapists talk and lads mags quotes about women other than the relative degradingness of each.

1 Inspection

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quotes was, on average, higher than the mean rank accorded to the eight rapist quotes (Ms = 9.15, 7.85, respectively, both SD = 1.37). A one-sample t-test showed that both these means were signicantly different from the mid-point of the ranking scale, 8.5, both t(39) = 3.01, p = .005. In other words, the participants ranked the quotes drawn from lads mags to be more degrading to women than the quotes drawn from convicted rapists. The proportion of participants who categorized each quote as degrading during the degrading split task is also shown in Table 2. The participants categorizing an average of 11.65 quotes as derogatory and 4.35 quotes as non-derogatory, and categorized an equal number of quotes from lads mags and from convicted rapists as derogatory (M = 5.85, 5.80, respectively, SD = 1.42, 1.82). Finally, we examined if the participants could correctly identify the source of the quotes. Participants attributed slightly fewer quotes to lads mags than to convicted rapists (M = 7.63, 8.38, respectively, both SD = 2.47). Across the experiment as a whole, the participants guessed correctly only 56.1% of the time when they attributed a quote to a lads mag and only 55.4% of the time when they attributed a quote to a convicted rapist. Although participants guesses were better than chance predictions (t (39) = 2.58, p < .001), the high error rate nonetheless suggests that participants experienced considerable difculty in distinguishing between quotes from the two sources. Participants categorized the statements similarly irrespective of their gender, exposure to lads mags, and attitudes towards lads mags. Women and men did not differ in the number of quotes from either source that they categorized as degrading, attributed to convicted rapists or to lads mags, or attributed accurately, all t < 1, all p > .34. Nineteen men and 10 women reported that they had read a lads mag. Readers and non-readers correctly identied an equivalent number of quotes from rapists and from lads mags, both t < 1. Finally, as in Study 1, we calculated participants scores on the measure of Perceived Legitimacy of Lads Mags (Cronbachs = .75). There was no relationship between attitudes and any of the following; the mean rank of rapists and lads mags quotes on the degradingness continuum; the number of each type of quote categorized as degrading; or the number of each quote whose source was correctly identied, all r (39) < .21, all p > .20.

Thematic analysis We analysed participants verbatim explanations of their guesses next by transcribing the tape recordings we made during the performance of the sorting tasks and subjecting them to thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The analysis aimed to determine rst whether participants expressed difculty in making the judgements, and second, the range of ideas that they drew upon to make those judgements. Several participants report difculty in categorizing the quotes (e.g., In general there is nothing that stands out as a lads mag piece and nothing that stands out as a criminal . . . I am just shocked by how similar some of them are. Male Participant). Participants drew upon different ideas to explain how they approached the task. Many participants drew upon the idea that lads mags printed views that fell within the range of what men might normally say while those attributed to rapists were too offensive, or too violent to fall within this category. Participants also drew on the ideas that lads mags give advice to young men, and are humorous. Others drew upon the ideas that rapists use techniques of neutralization to excuse their actions (Gilbert & Webster, 1982), and that rapists lack understanding of how to interpret sexual refusal (Frith, 2009). Illustrative quotations from participants are shown in Table 3. Finally, we aimed to see

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Table 3. Themes in explanations of attributions of quotes to lads mags and convicted rapists Theme N Example

Explanations of attributions of quotes to lads mags

Advice giving 24 This is exactly the message they try and promote in lads mags . . . the types of blokes who read them want to know how to be in control. (M) These are conversations that you would expect boys to have. (F) I think if you assume a rapist you think the worst. So thats why the worst ones are in the other pile. (F) Their use of words, their vocabulary and general attitudes towards sex and girls . . . they are just making jokes of everything. (F)

Normal male conversation Atypical of rapists Humour

23 20 13

Explanations of attributions of quotes to convicted rapists

Violence 24 These ones seem to be a bit over the top, and they tend to be more violent as well. There is more of a sense of anger and entitlement behind some of these . . . . (M) They had the sort of . . . they deserved it kind of thing . . . these seem to be reasons why they might have committed an offence . . . to put the woman in the wrong and make their actions sound less . . . bad . . . . (M) Thats pretty sick really and disgusting, so I would never think that it would be from a lads mag, because thats just too horrible and twisted. (F) Ive always thought as rapists as men that dont understand signals from women, or think that they can just take what they want . . . misinterpret certain things that mean women want them . . . saying no but really they mean yes. (F)

Excusing

17

Too offensive for lads mags Mistaken communication

12

if participants expressed evaluations of the quotes themselves. While most participants described the quotes negatively or neutrally, explicit agreement with victim-blaming ideas was evident in a few instances (N = 5, e.g., . . . some girls do lead men on . . . the way they dress all the time, in really short skirts . . . and really really low tops, so what do they expect? They want men to look at them though dont they? Female Participant). As many participants reported difculty, these quotes ought not to be interpreted as evidence of participants actual cognitive processes. Moreover, participants may have been primed to think about sexism particularly by the experimental task. As such, the thematic analysis should be read as suggestive of some culturally available ideas that young people can draw upon when they are demanded to explain their judgements about the distinction between the contents of lads mags and the things that convicted rapists say (c.f., Nisbett & Wilson, 1977).

Discussion
It is far from easy to tell the difference between the quotes we sampled from lads mags and those sampled from convicted rapists. Indeed, many participants reported their own difculty in making such determinations. Other participants described lads mags as normal, funny, and advice giving, but not too violent or offensive.

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In light of the participants own high error rates when classifying the quotes, these ideas appear to be poor descriptions of the contents of such magazines. Indeed, contrary to the participants self-reported basis for their judgements, the quotes from lads mags and rapists were categorized as derogatory with equal frequency and the quotes from lads mags were ranked as more derogatory than those from convicted rapists. Thus, as in Study 1, Study 2 demonstrates how young people may hold erroneous theories that lads mags do not contain extreme derogatory sexism.

GENERAL DISCUSSION
Are the quotes we drew from interviews with convicted rapists and lads mags similar or different? It seems possible to draw quotes from contemporary lads mags as easily as from interviews with convicted rapists with which particularly hostile sexist men identify (Study 1). The young men in Study 1 identied more with the quotes genuinely drawn from rapists speech than lads mags, but identied less with the quotes attributed to rapists than attributed to lads mags, suggesting that they tried to avoid identifying with criminals, but underestimated the overlap in content between convicted rapists and lads mags. Similarly, in Study 2, young women and men voiced difculty in identifying the sources of these quotes. To discern the difference between them, they voiced theories about what is normal and what is extreme. However, overall these participants guessed the quotes correctly only about 55% of the time. Contrary to their own theories, the participants judged the contents of lads mags to be equally, or more, derogatory than that of convicted rapists. Jointly, the two studies show that the quotes were perceived as different from each other, but that it would be ill-advised to conclude as some Study-2 participants did that the content of lads mags is simply less extreme than the legitimization strategies voiced by convicted rapists. We think that there are two possible explanations of the surprising nding in Study 1 that men identied more with the quotes drawn from convicted rapists. First, in Study 2, the quotes drawn from lads mags were actually ranked as more derogatory, and so men who aimed to appear non-sexist may have been more likely to avoid identication with the quotes from lads mags than the quotes from convicted rapists. The surprising nding that lads mags quotes were actually more derogatory than convicted rapist quotes may also explain why the manipulation in Study 1 had a stronger effect on identication with the lads mags quotes. Second, the quotes may have differed in ways that were not strictly relevant to their derogatory content, but which affected identication for other reasons. The lads mags quotes appeared to us, and to some participants in Study 2, to be offering advice. As the convicted rapists quotes were drawn from interviews rather than edited print media, they are also somewhat more unrehearsed in their language. Such factors that we did not anticipate or measure here because they were not central to our hypotheses about lads mags may have affected identication in Study 1.2 Both studies demonstrate how young people may be assuming, in line with cultural discourse, that a boundary can be detected between the overlapping discourse of lads mags and convicted rapists, such that the former is normal and the latter is extreme.
2 We

would like to thank the anonymous reviewer who brought this explanation to our attention and urged us to think more deeply about these matters.

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Both studies suggest that it is harder to tell the difference than this folk theory suggests. This folk theory may serve as a poor guide because of the existence of a continuum of sexual violence (Kelly, 1988) that includes a wide range of behaviours including threats of violence, sexual harassment, coercive sex, rape, and incest. Kelly (1988) emphasized that the boundaries between categories of sexual violence are fuzzy, and that the continuum does not imply either linear progression or progressive seriousness (Brown & Walklate, 2011). Similarly, other researchers have argued that contrary to the belief that male sexual aggression is unusual or strange (Groth, 1971), rape is learned behaviour (Bart, 1979) and many men hold attitudes or beliefs that may lead them to commit a sexually aggressive act (Scully, 1990). In line with this conceptual framing, our studies show that the ways in which convicted rapists and lads mags discuss female sexuality are similar enough to each other to be frequently confused and distinctions between them are blurred. We are not the rst to describe the sexist contents of contemporary magazines aimed at young men. However, our studies go beyond past research on lads mags because we have not only described what lads mags are, but have also demonstrated how young people make sense of them. While magazine editors deny their publications are a source of social inuence, our studies suggest that the mainstream status of such magazines allows them to legitimize views about women that young men might otherwise consider unacceptable. In other words, the status of lads mags as legitimate mainstream publications may lend their contents performative force (Butler, 1997) to bring about change in the range of sexist opinions with which young men will identify. People are sometimes threatened when their views overlap with those of groups they dislike (Pool, Wood, & Leck, 1998). Here, young people struggled to correctly attribute the sources of the quotes (Study 2) and young men identied more with the quotes when they were attributed to lads mags (Study 1). Jointly, these two ndings suggest that sexist talk about women in lads mags may be something more than ineffectual harmless ironic fun; these magazines very status as mainstream publications may afford them the power to normalize very egregious sexist beliefs about women. Indeed, one participant in Study 2 described the quotes presented to him as sort of degrading in a way that can be seen to be acceptable if they put it in a glossy magazine. He continued: not that a lads mag would condone raping someone, but they try to use language that makes it sound like a consensual type of thing. Without being aware of our hypothesis, this participant voiced a version of that hypothesis when he assumed that lads mags normalize degrading sexism, and use language about womens consent to do so. This participant went further than we do by suggesting that lads mags deliberately use linguistic strategies to make their sexist content appear less extreme. Unlike this male participant, we have no basis for an argument that the editors of lads mags deliberately beguile their readers into accepting sexist content. Rather the ndings of Studies 1 and 2 suggest that the justication of such sexism as mere irony is insufcient.

Concluding thought Since conducting these experiments in 2010, the mainstream status of lads mags has entered a state of ux. In February 2011, most major supermarket chains and petrol stations in the United Kingdom agreed to move lads mags to the top shelf, out of the eye line of children (Object, 2011). Not all sales outlets in the United Kingdom have signed up to the agreement and these changes have not yet come fully into force. The current policy debate about how lads mags are to be sold centres on the possible harm that

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their contents might do to children. We hope that our results inform policy debates by shifting attention to the possible dangers that lads mags might pose to their intended audience of young men, and to the young women with whom those men socialize.

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