Shades of Sexualization: When Sexualization Becomes Sexual Objectification

Sexual objectification versus empowerment: Examining the effects of sexualized women's facial expression on viewers' evaluations of social cognition and self-objectification

Objectification scholarship highlights how traditional media portrayals oftentimes direct attention toward women's bodies and away from their faces which communicate important social information. This study sought to investigate how thin-ideal, white women's facial expression potentially attenuates the negative effects of appearing in a sexually objectifying manner using validated imagery. In a 2 × 3 between-subjects experiment (N = 1001 U.S. adult women; Mage = 42.56, SDage = 12.72), portraits of women varied in their sexualization (non-sexualized vs. sexualized) and facial expression (neutral expression, low-intensity smiling, high-intensity smiling) to better understand how these factors influence dimensions of social cognition (competence, warmth, authenticity), self-promotional attributions, and viewers' own self-objectification. Results revealed that viewers rated sexualized (vs. non-sexualized) women lower in competence and authenticity, as well ascribed more self-promotional explanations for their behavior. Moreover, exposure to sexualized women heightened viewers' self-objectification, regardless of facial expression. Results also indicated that smiling intensity positively influenced viewers' ratings of social cognition. However, there is little evidence that smiling intensity overrides the negative effects of sexualization. Implications for the sexual objectification of women are discussed.

How social media images of sexualized young women elicit appearance commentary from their peers and reinforce objectification

Social media platforms like Instagram enable users to share, view, and provide feedback on images, including photographs of oneself (e.g., selfies). In a 3 × 2 between-subjects online experiment, we investigated how women evaluate and react to photographs of their peers on social media and the role that feedback might play in both objectification of others and oneself. U.S. adult young women (N = 256; Mage = 20.06, SDage = 1.57) viewed social media images of sexualized peers, non-sexualized peers, or landscapes (control). Then, they provided feedback on the images via social media hashtags (#) or not (tagging vs. no tagging). Results revealed that participants who viewed sexualized peers demonstrated the highest levels of state self-objectification and were more likely to dehumanize the women in the photos. Hashtags generated by participants indicated that those who viewed sexualized peers engaged in greater appearance-related objectification, specifically related to body parts, and sexual objectification than those who viewed non-sexualized peers. In addition, generating hashtags that specifically focused on body parts heightened viewers' state self-objectification. These findings illustrate the complexities of social media content production and consumption, particularly for young women.

Comparing and self-objectifying: The effect of sexualized imagery posted by Instagram Influencers on women's body image

Influencers are prominent figures on social media with a large number of followers who promote products, companies, and/or lifestyles. Some Influencers endorse lingerie and bikini products and there is growing concern about the overtly sexualized nature of the imagery they post to social media. This study aimed to experimentally examine the impact of exposure to images of female Influencers dressed in either fashionable clothes (fashion condition) or in lingerie/bikini garments posed in a suggestive manner (sexualized condition) on women's negative mood and body dissatisfaction relative to control (fashion products). Young women (N = 230, aged 17-25years) were recruited online and randomly allocated to one of the conditions. They completed pre/post state measures of mood and body dissatisfaction, as well as measures of state appearance comparison and self-objectification. Planned comparisons revealed that viewing images of Influencers led to greater negative mood, body dissatisfaction, self-objectification, and appearance comparison than viewing control images. Viewing sexualized images also led to greater negative mood, body dissatisfaction, and appearance comparison than did viewing standard fashion images. State appearance comparison was found to mediate these differences. The findings highlight the negative impact of sexualized images on social media and the need for enhanced regulation in relation to Influencer advertising.

The effect of attire attractiveness on students' perception of their teachers

Introduction

Generally, people do judge a book by its cover. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of teachers' attire on students' perception of 34 psychological dimensions.

Methods

The research is an experiment, with self-reported data, in groups, based on a questionnaire. The participants were 173 students (M_age = 12.16, SD = 1.74) from Suceava, Romania. Two groups of students were asked to listen to a sample lesson of a therapeutic story, narrated by a teacher. One group was given a picture of the attractive teacher and the other group a picture of the unattractive teacher, and were told that the teacher who is narrating is the teacher in the picture. After listening to the same story, the respondents had to answer a questionnaire about teachers' personality and characteristics.

Results

The results indicated that when the teacher is perceived as being more attractive, the students have a greater openness for school activities, the evaluation of the teacher's personality is more positive, the evaluation of the teaching effort is more positive, students expect a higher grade, and the perceived age of the teacher is lower.

Discussion

The article underlines the role of clothing in molding student's perception and raises questions about dress codes in schools. Implications for school context are discussed.

#SexyBodyPositive: When Sexualization Does Not Undermine Young Women's Body Image

Research suggests that exposure to social networking sites portraying a thin and often sexualized beauty ideal reduces young women's body satisfaction, while exposure to body-positive content improves it. However, it is unclear whether sexualization could impair the beneficial effects of body-positivity messages. Young Italian women were exposed to one of three experimental conditions showing sexualized beauty ideals, sexualized body positivity, or non-sexualized body positivity that appeared either on Instagram (Study 1, N = 356) or TikTok (Study 2, N = 316). Across the two studies, results showed that, regardless of sexualization, exposure to body positivity increased body satisfaction and positive mood compared with pre-exposure measures, while exposure to sexualized beauty ideals reduced it. Participants in the sexualized beauty ideal condition also engaged in upward appearance social comparison whereas body positivity elicited downward comparison. Problematic social networking sites' use moderated the effects of condition on body satisfaction, appearance social comparison, and positive mood, while downward comparison mediated the relation between condition and body satisfaction and positive mood. Our results highlight both beneficial and critical aspects of body positivity that should be taken into consideration when designing body image interventions and policymaking.

The perception of competence in the newsroom: Why stereotypical dress styles violate Title VII

Title VII prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace “because of sex.” Once on the job, however, courts allow employers to impose trait discrimination policies on employees, including sex stereotypical ones. Based on a survey experiment, we found that sex stereotyped dress styles for women—defined by bright colors, long hair, excessive make-up in contrast to dark suits, ties, and short hair cuts for men—sexualize women, thereby undermining viewers' perception of women's professional competence. A vast social-psychological literature explains “why.” Specifically, gender is a diffuse status characteristic that generally diminishes the perception of women’s capabilities. Sexualized dress styles augment that effect of gender by diverting viewers' attention from women's job performance to the visual attributes of women as objects. Our study confirms that women’s sexualized dress styles decrease viewers’ perceptions of women’s competence. We contend that this reduction in the perception of women’s competence disproportionately disadvantages members of a protected class, women, and, by so doing, constitutes an “adverse effect”. Notably, Title VII prohibits policies that impose adverse effects. Thus, by integrating legal standards with social psychological scholarship, this study presents a new foundation for the claim many legal scholars have sought to make, namely, why at least some trait discrimination policies violate Title VII.

Body Gaze as a Marker of Sexual Objectification: A New Scale for Pervasive Gaze and Gaze Provocation Behaviors in Heterosexual Women and Men

Body gaze behavior is assumed to be a key feature of sexual objectification. However, there are few self-report gaze measures available and none capturing behavior which seeks to invite body gaze from others. Across two studies, we used existing self-report instruments and measurement of eye movements to validate a new self-report scale to measure pervasive body gaze behavior and body gaze provocation behavior in heterosexual women and men. In Study 1, participants (N = 1021) completed a survey with newly created items related to pervasive body gaze and body gaze provocation behavior. Participants also completed preexisting measures of body attitudes, sexual assault attitudes, pornography use, and relationship status. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses across independent samples suggested a 12-item scale for men and women to separately measure pervasive body gaze (5 items) and body gaze provocation (7 items) toward the opposite sex. The two scales yielded excellent internal consistency estimates (.86-.89) and promising convergent validity via positive correlations with body and sexual attitudes. In Study 2, a subsample (N = 167) of participants from Study 1 completed an eye-tracking task to capture their gaze behavior toward matched images of partially and fully dressed female and male subjects. Men exhibited body-biased gaze behavior toward all the female imagery, whereas women exhibited head-biased gaze behavior toward fully clothed male imagery. Importantly, self-reported body gaze correlated positively with some aspects of objectively measured body gaze behavior. Both scales showed good test-retest reliability and were positively correlated with sexual assault attitudes.

Women and #MeToo in Italy: Internalized sexualization is associated with tolerance of sexual harassment and negative views of the #MeToo movement

As a consequence of exposure to sexualized messages, girls and women may internalize the belief that sexual attractiveness to men is an important aspect of their identity. Whereas research on internalized sexualization has mainly focused on its consequences for girls’ well-being and academic outcomes, the present study (N = 222, women, aged 20 to 29) examined whether internalized sexualization is related to sexist attitudes and tolerance of sexual harassment among young women. It also analyzed internalized sexualization’ links to women’s views of notorious sexual abuse allegations in the so-called Weinstein scandal and attitudes towards the #MeToo movement, a campaign aimed at combatting sexual harassment and sexual assault. The study was conducted in Italy, a context characterized by pervasive sexualized messages and diffuse criticism against the #MeToo movement. The findings showed that internalized sexualization was associated with stronger endorsement of sexist attitudes and higher acceptance of sexual harassment myths, which worked as sequential mediators of skepticism towards sexual abuse allegations in the Weinstein scandals. Endorsement of sexist attitudes mediated the relation between internalized sexualization and negative attitudes towards the #MeToo movement. This study extends the knowledge on the correlates of sexualization, suggesting that women’s internalization of the belief that they should be sexually attractive to men might contribute to reinforce ideologies and attitudes that perpetrate women’s mistreatment while diminishing support for social activism on women’s behalf.

Instagram Sexualization: When posts make you feel dissatisfied and wanting to change your body

Instagram is a visually centered social media that involves the presence of sexualized imagery posted by users. Such Instagram sexualization may have a negative impact on women's body image. The present study examined whether exposure to Instagram sexualization, namely posts of sexualized women along with appearance-related comments, affected women's body satisfaction and cosmetic surgery intentions. In doing so, it also considered the moderating role of Instagram Addiction Proclivity (IAP). Young Italian female participants (N = 247) were randomly exposed to one of four video conditions resulting from the combination of either sexualized or non-sexualized women's pictures on Instagram, paired with appearance or neutral comments. In the sexualized picture condition participants' body dissatisfaction increased compared to pre-exposure levels and to the non-sexualized picture condition. The type of comments did not affect participants' body satisfaction. Moreover, IAP predicted cosmetic surgery intentions and moderated their reactions to Instagram content. Indeed, the higher the IAP, the higher the cosmetic surgery intentions of participants viewing sexualized pictures with neutral comments and non-sexualized pictures with body appearance comments. These findings suggest that female Instagram users should be aware of the negative impacts of viewing sexualized imagery as well as the role that IAP may play.

The Sexual OBjectification and EMotion database: A free stimulus set and norming data of sexually objectified and non-objectified female targets expressing multiple emotions

Sexual objectification - perceiving or treating a woman as a sexual object - is a widespread phenomenon. Studies on sexual objectification and its consequences have grown dramatically over the last decades covering multiple and diverse areas of research. However, research studying sexual objectification might have limited internal and external validity due to the lack of a controlled and standardized picture database. Moreover, there is a need to extend this research to other fields including the study of emotions. Therefore, in this paper we introduce the SOBEM Database, a free tool consisting of 280 high-resolution pictures depicting objectified and non-objectified female models expressing a neutral face and three different emotions (happiness, anger, and sadness) with different intensity. We report the validation of this dataset by analyzing results of 134 participants judging pictures on the six basic emotions and on a range of social judgments related to sexual objectification. Results showed how the SOBEM can constitute an appropriate instrument to study both sexual objectification per se and its relation with emotions. This database could therefore become an important instrument able to improve the experimental control in future studies on sexual objectification and to create new links with different fields of research.

Pornography Use, Two Forms of Dehumanization, and Sexual Aggression: Attitudes vs. Behaviors

Sexual objectification is a common pornographic theme. Research shows that sexual objectification leads to the expression of aggressive attitudes and behaviors toward women. Based on a survey study of 320 male participants, this study re-conceptualizes sexual objectification in terms of two forms of dehumanization. Evidence suggests men's pornography use is positively associated with both forms, but mechanistic dehumanization of women is more associated with aggressive attitudes while animalistic dehumanization is more associated with aggressive behaviors. Findings indicate how objectifying pornography use may relate to aggressive attitudes and behaviors and inform the future education campaigns and interventions to reduce sexual aggression.

An Experiencer, An Animal or An Object? Erection Salience Decreases Men's Perceived Agency

Three experiments investigated the influence of penile erection on ascriptions of mental capabilities to men. Drawing on sexual objectification literature and the distinction between agency and experience in mind perception, three competing predictions were formulated. The mind redistribution hypothesis assumed that penile erection would lower agency and heighten experience attributions, the animalistic dehumanization hypothesis predicted the decrease in agency, but not experience, and the literal objectification hypothesis implied the simultaneous decrease in both agency and experience. In Experiment 1 (N = 219; 128 females), erection salience lowered agency, but not experience capabilities ascribed to male targets. Experiment 2 (N = 201, 113 females) replicated the negative effect of erection salience on perceived agency (but not experience) and revealed that erection salience lowered intentions to hire a male target. This effect was explained with the loss of perceived agency. Experiment 3 (N = 203, 98 females) verified the causal relationship between penile erection, agency and hiring intentions. Taken together, these results supported the animalistic dehumanization hypothesis.

Media-Induced Sexual Harassment: The Routes from Sexually Objectifying Media to Sexual Harassment

Media that sexually objectify women by portraying them in ways that emphasize physical beauty and sexual readiness as well as reduce them to decorative and sexual objects have been traditionally identified by scholars as a powerful cultural risk factor encouraging sexual harassment and sexual violence. In the present article we review the existing empirical evidence linking sexually objectifying media and sexual harassment of women to the overarching and integrative Media-Induced Sexual Harassment framework. This framework offers a coherent scheme for explaining the effects of sexually objectifying media on three target groups directly involved in sexual harassment—perpetrators, victims, and bystanders—and it postulates three cognitive and emotional mechanisms through which sexually objectifying media lead to sexual harassment: dehumanization, disruption of emphatic resonance, and a shift in gender norms. The evidence reviewed on the basis of the Media-Induced Sexual Harassment framework shows that sexually objectifying media converge in normalizing harassing behaviors and can be a causal risk factor for increasing engagement in sexual harassment, heightening victims’ acceptance of sexual harassment and discouraging bystander intervention. We discuss implications of these arguments for effectively preventing negative effects of exposure to sexually objectifying media and for education programs aimed at critical media-consumption.

Measuring objectification through the Body Inversion Paradigm: Methodological issues

Objectification occurs when a person is perceived and/or treated like an object. With the present work, we overview the available measures of objectification and present a series of studies aimed at investigating the validity of the task of inverted body recognition proposed by Bernard and colleagues (2012), which might potentially be a useful cognitive measure of objectification. We conducted three studies. Study 1 (N = 101) is a direct replication of Bernard et al.'s study: participants were presented with the same photos of sexualized male and female targets used in the original research. Study 2a (N = 100) is a conceptual replication: we used different images of scantily dressed male and female models. Finally, in Study 2b (N = 100), we investigated a boundary condition by presenting to participants photos of the same models as in Study 2a, but fully dressed and non-sexualized. Using mixed-effects models for completely-crossed classified data structures, we investigated the relationship between the inversion effect and the stimulus' asymmetry, sexualization and attractiveness, and the perceivers' self-objectification, sexism, and automatic woman-human association. Study 1 replicated the original results, showing a stronger inversion effect for male photos. However, no difference between male and female stimuli emerged in either Study 2a or 2b. Moreover, the impact of the other variables on the inversion effect was highly unstable across the studies. These aspects together indicate that the inversion effect depends on the specific set of stimuli and limits the generalizability of results collected using this method.

The Relationship between the Use of Social Networking Sites and Sexually Explicit Material, the Internalization of Appearance Ideals and Body Self-Surveillance: Results from a Longitudinal Study of Male Adolescents

Although there is now a substantial body of research suggesting a positive association between the exposure to sexualized content in the media and self-objectification/body surveillance, most of the studies have been cross-sectional, conducted in exclusively female samples, focused on the use of traditional media (e.g., printed magazines and TV), and have not assessed the role of the internalization of appearance ideals, which is potentially an important intervening variable in the relationship between media exposure and outcomes related to body concerns. Addressing the need for further assessments of self-objectification in more diverse samples, this study used five-wave longitudinal data to investigate the parallel changes in the use of social networking sites and sexually explicit material and the internalization of appearance ideals and body surveillance in Croatian adolescent men (M_{age at baseline} = 15.9, SD = 0.54; n= 743). Over a period of 22 months during the transition from middle to late adolescence, both the internalization of appearance ideals and body surveillance decreased. Furthermore, although the internalization of appearance ideals and body surveillance were associated both at baseline and over time, this study's results did not indicate a longitudinal relationship between respectively the use of online social networking sites and sexually explicit material and either the internalization of appearance ideals or body surveillance among adolescent males. Overall, this study's findings highlight the potential for a more specific assessment of the role of the use of social networking sites and sexually explicit material in self-objectification and body surveillance among young men. Future research may benefit from exploring the relationship between young men's modes of engagement with and motives for the use of social networking sites and body surveillance, as well as the possible association between the use of sexually explicit material and competency-based self-objectification, in particular sexual body functionality.

The (Female) Graduate: Choice and Consequences of Women's Clothing

This research investigates how female students choose their graduation outfit and how clothing affects observers’ judgments. In Study 1, we manipulated the students’ graduation outfit so as to look professional or sexy. Female peers, adults, and professors formed a first impression about the students, their thesis work and guessed their graduation scores (thesis points and final mark). All participant groups judged the professionally dressed students as more competent, as having put more effort in their thesis, and as having obtained better scores than when the same students dressed sexy. In Studies 2 and 3 we replicated previous findings by using photos portraying real students in their actual graduation outfits. We found that sexy clothing, considered inappropriate for the occasion, affected estimated and actual graduation scores negatively and that this effect was mediated by perceived incompetence. Results are discussed with respect to women’s evaluation on the basis of their appearance.