Memory performance of 118 individuals who had been in close dating relationships for at least 3 months was studied. For a memory task ostensibly to be performed by pairs, some Ss were paired with their partners and some were paired with an opposite-sex partner from another couple. For some pairs a memory structure was assigned (e.g., 1 partner should remember food items, another should remember history items, etc.), whereas for others no structure was mentioned. Pairs studied together without communication, and recall was tested in individuals. Memory performance of the natural pairs was better than that of impromptu pairs without assigned structure, whereas the performance of natural pairs was inferior to that of impromptu pairs when structure was assigned. Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.-Samuel Johnson People in close relationships know many things about each other's memories. One partner may not know where to find candles around the house, for instance, but may still be able to find them in a blackout by asking the other partner where the candles are. Each partner can enjoy the benefits of the pair's memory by assuming responsibility for remembering just those items that fall clearly to him or to her and then by attending to the categories of knowledge encoded by the partner so that items within those categories can be retrieved from the partner when they are needed. Such knowledge of one another's memory areas takes time and practice to develop, but the result is that close couples have an implicit structure for carrying out the pair's memory tasks. With this structure in place, couples in close relationships have a transactive memory that is greater than either of their individual memories. Transactive memory is a shared system for encoding, storing, and retrieving information (Wegner, 1986; Wegner, Giuliano, & Hertel, 1985). This research was designed to examine transactive memory by introducing new structures for memory organization in the couple. We expected that couples formed on an impromptu basis in the laboratory might gain in group memory performance as a result of an imposed organizational strategy, as such a plan would help them to focus their individual memory efforts to the pair's benefit. Because close couples already have an understood structure in place, however, we expected that an imposed organizational strategy might interfere with their implicit arrangement and thus undermine their memory performance. We thank Julie Aniol for assisting in the conduct of the research and Toni Wegner for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

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One characteristic of men who sexually harass is that they are not aware that their actions are inappropriate or a misuse of their power (L. F. Fitzgerald, 1993a). We investigated the existence and automaticity of a mental association between the concepts of power and sex, and its consequences for sexual harassment tendencies. Using a subliminal priming paradigm, Experiment 1 demonstrated an automatic link between power and sex, and only for men high in the likelihood to sexually harass or aggress. In Experiment 2, male participants were unobtrusively primed with either power-related or neutral stimuli. For men likely to sexually aggress, but not other participants, attraction ratings of a female confederate were significantly higher in the power priming than the neutral priming condition.

Sexual harassment is considered from the perspective of power abuse in general. Recent research on sexually aggressive men has underscored the importance of power and dominance as a motivator of their behavior toward women. One striking feature of both sexual harassment and the misuse of power is the lack of awareness offenders often show regarding the inappropriateness of their actions. This lack of awareness is similar to automatic or nonconscious effects demonstrated in social perception and judgment research, such as the unintentional influence of one's stereotypes informing impressions of others. The possibility that having power within a situation automatically and nonconsciously triggers a sexuality schema, just as racial or gender features automatically trigger stereotypes of that group, is discussed and supporting research is described. It is shown, for example, that for men likely to sexually harass, merely activating the concept of power without their knowledge causes them to find the same woman more attractive. The possible origins of the automatic power → sex link, and its implications for preventing sexual harassment behavior, are discussed.

In two experiments, conducted in Germany and the U. S.A., it

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