The Effects of Exposure to Catcalling on Women’s State Self-Objectification and Body Image

Investigating the Psychological Impact of Cyber-Sexual Harassment

The impact of cyber sexual harassment (CSH) on adult women and the factors influencing this impact are largely under-researched. Communication technologies provide novel means for people to threaten, communicate, and harass others. Victims of in-person sexual harassment (ISH) can experience negative symptoms of depression, anxiety, trauma, and negative body image. The current study explored the psychological impact of CSH in adult women to determine whether CSH predicts psychological difficulties. Adult female participants (N = 136) took part in an online, cross-sectional study; 44% of participants had experienced CSH and this was associated with higher levels of depression, anxiety, trauma, and body image dissatisfaction. Younger victims, those who had been in a relationship for a shorter amount of time, those who had previously experienced of ISH, and those who had a higher number of social media followers were more likely to have experienced CSH. When controlling for demographic variables, CSH predicted anxiety, depression, trauma, and body image dissatisfaction; however, experience of ISH impacted upon body-image dissatisfaction over and above CSH. There is a need to routinely ask individuals accessing mental health services whether online interactions cause harm. Future research should examine these phenomena in more ethnically diverse samples.

Experimental Studies on State Self-Objectification: A Review and an Integrative Process Model

This paper provides an organizing framework for the experimental research on the effects of state self-objectification on women. We explain why this body of work, which had grown rapidly in the last 20 years, departs from the original formulation of objectification theory (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997). We compare the different operationalizations of state self-objectification and examine how they map onto its theoretical definition, concluding that the operationalizations have focused mostly on one component of this construct (concerns about one's physical appearance) while neglecting others (adopting a third-person perspective and treating oneself as a dehumanized object). We review the main findings of studies that experimentally induced state self-objectification and examined its affective, motivational, behavioral, cognitive, and physiological outcomes. We note that three core outcomes of this state as specified by objectification theory (safety anxiety, reduced flow experiences, and awareness of internal body states) have hardly been examined so far. Most importantly, we introduce an integrative process model, suggesting that the reported effects are triggered by four different mechanisms: appearance monitoring, experience of discrepancy from appearance standards, stereotype threat, and activation of the "sex object" schema. We propose strategies for distinguishing between these mechanisms and explain the theoretical and practical importance of doing so.