In two experiments the conditions of, and the processes leading to, gender biases in fame judgments were investigated. In Experiment 1, the gender bias was not reduced in a condition that alerted participants to the gender of the names. In Experiment 2, participants' sex-role orientation, but not their gender, was related to the gender bias. The process dissociation procedure was used in both experiments in an attempt to separate conscious and unconscious memory processes contributing to the gender bias. Using L. (...) L. Jacoby's original measurement model there appeared to be evidence for unconscious influences on the gender bias in fame judgments. Unfortunately, this evidence disappeared when a model was used that takes guessing and, hence, response biases into account, which confirms that measurement models that ignore response biases in the process dissociation procedure may lead to erroneous conclusions. (shrink)

In this article, we try to clarify some of the issues raised by S. C. Draine, A. G. Greenwald, and M. R. Banaji concerning our investigation into the gender bias in fame judgments . First, we did not test the general hypothesis and did not draw the general conclusion that Drain et al. suggest we did. Second, we did not reject M. R. Banaji and A. G. Greenwald's assumptions about the familiarity of male and female names in the fame judgment (...) task, but we showed how one could have come to reject it using a widespread measurement model for the process dissociation procedure. Third, we argue that the processes which Draine et al. suggest should also be included in the measurement model we used are probably negligible, and if they are not, then the validity of the results of a number of fame judgment experiments must be called into question. In general, however, we agree with what seems to be the main message ofM. R. Banaji and A. G. Greenwald's research, namely, that social categories have to be considered whenever priming is investigated within a social domain. (shrink)