Question 15.23

15.23 Where are your eyes?

The objectifying gaze, often referred to as “ogling” or “checking out,” can have many adverse consequences. A group of researchers used eye-tracking technology to better understand the nature and causes for this gaze. They asked 29 women and 36 men to look at images of college-aged women. Each woman had the same clothes and neutral expression but varied in body shape (ideal, average, and below average). Prior to looking at the images, each participant was told to focus on either the appearances or personalities of the women. Here is a summary of the amount of time (in milliseconds) the eyes focused on the chest of the women.

	Gender
	Male		Female
Focus		SE		SE
Appearance	448.25	35.98	463.22	48.09
Personality	338.78	54.25	276.48	46.06

Plot the means. Do you think there is an interaction? Explain your answer.
Do you think the marginal means would be useful for understanding the results of this study? Explain why or why not.
The researchers broke these results down further using body shape as a third factor. Describe why the inclusion of this factor complicates the analysis. In other words, why is this not a standard three-factor experiment.

15.23

(a) There appears to be an interaction effect; the lines are not parallel. (b) There appears to be a significant Focus main effect, so the marginal means for Focus would be useful in explaining this difference. (c) If each participant looked at a picture of each body type, then his or her responses likely would be related to each other, which violates the independence assumption.