Previous research finds that both men and women perceive sexualized women as lacking in certain human qualities such as mental capacity and moral status. The mechanism underlying this effect, however, is unclear. The present two studies test how appearance-based judgements affect the degree to which a broad sample of women are objectified. In Study 1 (N = 279), full-body images of women wearing different clothing outfits were rated by male and female participants on perceived attractiveness, sexual intent and age. In Study 2, male and female participants (N = 1,695) viewed these same images from Study 1 and rated them on two dimensions of objectification (agency and patiency). We analyzed associations between these dimensions of objectification and the averaged appearance-based perceptions from Study 1. We find that women perceived as more open to casual sex are attributed less mental capacity and less moral status. We also find that participants tend to associate attractiveness with greater mental and moral status in women, but we find only limited evidence that perceived age influences objectification. Our findings suggest that although positive attractiveness biases may mitigate the amount a woman is objectified, greater female objectification may be prompted by observers’ negative stereotypes of promiscuous women.
Objectification – reducing a someone to a something – represents a powerful and potentially damaging way in which we can see and treat others. Women are often victims of processes of objectification that occur whenever a woman is reduced to her body or certain body parts. What remains unclear is the extent to which a woman becomes an object when objectified. Using the oddball paradigm in three experiments, participants’ neural activity was measured while they analyzed frequently presented male a...
Last. Jon K. Maner(FSU: Florida State University)H-Index: 61
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Abstract Researchers have suggested that women compete with same-sex peers using indirect social tactics. However, the specific predictors and mechanisms of this form of female intrasexual competition are less well understood. We propose that one mechanism by which women harm rivals' social opportunities is through selectively transmitting reputation-relevant social information. Moreover, we contend that this behavior is designed to undermine the romantic and social appeal of same-sex romantic r...
#1Philippe Bernard(ULB: Université libre de Bruxelles)H-Index: 15
#2Tiziana Rizzo(ULB: Université libre de Bruxelles)H-Index: 1
Last. Olivier Klein(ULB: Université libre de Bruxelles)H-Index: 40
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At an early stage of visual processing, human faces and bodies are typically associated with larger N170s when presented in an inverted (vs. upright) position, indexing the involvement of configural processing. We challenged this view and hypothesized that sexualized bodies would not be sensitive to inversion, thereby suggesting that they would be processed similarly to objects. Participants saw sexualized male and female bodies, nonsexualized male and female bodies, as well as objects in both u...
Last. Patrick Boyd(USF: University of South Florida)H-Index: 4
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Women are objectified through overt sexualization and through a focus on physical appearance, but empirical research has not yet made this distinction. In three studies, we found evidence consisten...
Abstract Sexual objectification is a widespread phenomenon characterized by a focus on the individual's physical appearance over his/her mental state. This has been associated with negative social consequences, as objectified individuals are judged to be less human, competent, and moral. Moreover, behavioral responses toward the person change as a function of the degree of the perceived sexual objectification. In the present study, we investigated how behavioral and neural representations of oth...
#1David Pinsof(UCLA: University of California, Los Angeles)H-Index: 3
#2Martie G. Haselton(UCLA: University of California, Los Angeles)H-Index: 40
: Opposition to gay rights is prevalent in countries around the world. Recent correlational research suggests that opposition to gay rights may be driven by an interaction between one's own short-term mating orientation (i.e. willingness to engage in casual sex) and representations of gay people as sexually promiscuous. Here, we experimentally manipulated representations of gay men by randomly assigning participants to read one of two versions of a fictitious newspaper article, one of which cont...
Last. Karl Grammer(University of Vienna)H-Index: 48
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Male parental investment can contribute to the fitness of both sexes through increased fertility and child survivorship. The level and intensity of parental investment are dependent upon ecological variations: in harsh and demanding environments, the need for biparental care increases. Moreover, when environmental pressures increase, uncertainty over paternity may lead to favoring stricter mate-guarding practices, thus directing males to invest more effort toward controlling and guarding their m...
Women are sexually objectified when viewed and treated by others as mere objects. Abundant research has examined the negative consequences of being the target of sexual objectification; however, limited attention has focused on the person doing the objectification. Our focus is on the agent and how self-regulatory resources influence sexual objectification. Consistent with prior evidence, we reasoned that people have a well-learned automatic response to objectify sexualized women, and as such, w...
#2Peter Koval(ACU: Australian Catholic University)H-Index: 26
Last. Nick Haslam(University of Melbourne)H-Index: 80
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Sexual objectification, particularly of young women, is highly prevalent in modern industrialized societies. Although there is plenty of experimental and cross-sectional research on objectification, prospective studies investigating the prevalence and psychological impact of objectifying events in daily life are scarce. We used ecological momentary assessment to track the occurrence of objectifying events over 1 week in the daily lives of young women (N = 81). Participants reported being targete...
Previous research found that robots should best be designed to fit their given task, whilst others identified gender effects in people's evaluations of robots. This study combines this knowledge to investigate stereotyping effects of robot genderedness and assigned tasks in an online experiment (n = 89) manipulating robot gender (male vs. female) and task type (analytical vs. social) in a between subject's design in terms of trust, social perception, and humanness. People deem robots more compet...
Extensive experimental research has been conducted to investigate how individuals empathise with others depending on contextual and motivational factors. However, the effect of sexual objectification (i.e. focus on the individual's physical appearance over his/her mental state) on empathy is scarce at best thus far. The aim of this work is to shed light on whether objectification modulates empathic responses toward humans and human-like objects. In Experiment 1, participants either underwent vis...
#1Denise A. Baker(Missouri University of Science and Technology)H-Index: 7
#2Devin Michael Burns(Missouri University of Science and Technology)H-Index: 3
Last. Clair Reynolds Kueny(Missouri University of Science and Technology)H-Index: 2
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Video-mediated communication (VMC) tools such as Zoom are rapidly being adopted in distance education, telehealth, and for job-related purposes like meetings and interviews. However, how interactio...
