The object of my aggression: Sexual objectification increases physical aggression toward women

Objectification involves reducing someone to a sexual object, rather than seeing them as a full person. Despite numerous theoretical claims that people are more aggressive toward the objectified, and empirical evidence that objectification is linked to high willingness to aggress, rape proclivity, and aggressive attitudes, no research has examined a causal link between objectification and physical aggression, particularly in the context of provocation. In two experiments, we examined this predicted link. In Experiment 1, using a 2 (objectification: no/yes) × 2 (provocation: no/yes) factorial between‐subjects design, we investigated the effects of objectification, induced via body focus during a face‐to‐face interaction, and provocation on physical aggression toward a female confederate. Our results revealed a significant main effect of provocation, a marginal main effect of objectification, and a significant interaction between these variables. In the absence of a provocation, focusing on a woman's body increased aggression toward her. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 using a video of a target woman instead of a face‐to‐face interaction. Again, our results showed a significant two‐way interaction between objectification and provocation, wherein objectification increased aggression in the absence of provocation. Overall, this research indicates that objectification can lead to heightened physical aggression toward objectified women.

     

Sinful flesh: Sexual objectification threatens women's moral self

The current investigation examined whether sexual objectification leads to perceived contamination in women victims, which, in turn, triggers sinful feelings. The results of three experiments provide converging support for these predictions. Female participants reported greater sinful feelings than their non-objectified counterparts, after receiving objectifying comments on their physical appearance from an alleged male partner (Experiment 1) or recalling a past experience of objectification (Experiments 2 and 3). Furthermore, perceived contamination mediated the effect of objectification on sinful feelings. We also found that perceived personal responsibility of being objectified moderated the above effects, such that the effects were only observed among participants who perceived themselves as highly responsible for objectification experience, but not among those who perceived low personal responsibility. These findings contribute to the literature by explaining why objectification elicits sinful feelings in female victims and who is more susceptible to this influence.     

Inferences about the femininity of competent women and their implications for likability

Male (N=59) and female (N=60) college students were given a written protocol describing a competent, achievement-oriented female stimulus person (SP) with either a masculine or feminine pattern of vocational and avocational interests. Three groups were given a masculine-pattern protocol and one group was given a feminine-pattern one. They were then asked to rate the SP on likability in work and social settings, femininity, and a number of other personal attributes. Two groups given the masculine-pattern protocol were also supplied with the SP's responses to items from a “personality” test answered in a predominantly feminine (Masculine—Feminine SP) or masculine (Masculine-Masculine SP) direction. The remaining groups (Masculine-Neutral and Feminine-Neutral SPs) were given no additional information. In agreement with previous findings, the Masculine-Neutral SP was liked more in social settings than was the Feminine-Neutral one. It was hypothesized and confirmed that the Masculine-Neutral SP would be perceived as similar to the Masculine-Feminine SP in femininity and likability and that both these SPs would be judged to be higher on these characteristics than the Masculine-Masculine. Complex results were obtained from the ratings of other attributes. Overall, they indicated that the Masculine-Feminine SP, in whom femininity was explicitly suggested, received the weakest ratings on a series of achievement-related attributes and the Masculine-Neutral SP the strongest.     

Drive for leanness: assessment and relationship to gender, gender role and objectification

Three components of body image – drive for thinness (DT), drive for muscularity (DM), and drive for leanness (DL) – were assessed in 232 college students. A new measure of DL was developed. Data suggested that the new scale yielded valid and reliable scores. The relationships of gender, gender norm endorsement, and self-objectification to DT, DM, and DL were examined. The surveillance subscale of the OBC Scale was related to DL, DT, and DM in men and to DL and DT in women. Gender norm endorsement, specifically romantic relationships, moderated the relationship of surveillance to DT in women. Gender norm endorsement was directly related to DM and DT in men. DLS appeared to measure a distinct component of body image. Feminine gender role was only related to DT while masculine gender role was related to DL, DT, and DM, raising important questions about the gender differences in body image.     

The relative effects of competence and likability on interpersonal attraction

Undergraduate students in Singapore (N = 80) learned about the competence (low vs. high) and likability (low vs. high) of a future interaction partner and indicated their attraction toward that stranger. The effect of likability was two times as large as that of competence. Because of the additive effects of the two manipulated factors on attraction, the authors interpreted the preference for lovable fools over competent jerks as an outcome of a generalized supremacy of likability over competence.     

Rolling away the stone: post-abortion women in the Christian community

This article seeks to bring to awareness and address the issues of a neglected group of people in need of pastoral care: women who have had an abortion. It offers some commentary regarding what many women experience following an abortion, focuses on the story of a specific woman, and goes on to offer a biblical perspective for a pastoral response to their needs. Responses to the article are offered by a healthcare chaplain and a seminary professor.     

智慧时代的螺丝钉：机器人凸显对职场物化的影响

在“工具人” “打工人” “社畜”等流行语风靡职场的当下, 职场物化已然成为了一个亟需探讨的话题。而随着人工智能尤其是机器人在职场中的使用日益增多, 机器人产生的职场效应也值得关注。因此, 本项目旨在探讨在人工智能飞速发展的当今社会, 机器人渗入职场是否会产生或加重职场物化现象。基于群际威胁理论和补偿控制理论, 我们假设职场中的机器人员工凸显会增加职场物化。项目采用实验、大数据与问卷调查相结合的方式, 首先考察机器人员工的凸显是否会增加职场物化, 初步验证影响效应; 然后探讨机器人影响职场物化的中介机制, 试图发现感知威胁和控制补偿的链式中介效应; 最后从个人、机器人和环境三方面分别考察其对机器人影响职场物化的调节作用, 并从组织文化的角度探讨对职场物化的干预策略。对本项目的探索有助于结合人工智能尤其是机器人发展背景, 前瞻性地了解人工智能在职场中可能的负面影响, 并提出有效的解决方案。     

Consumer reactions to the decreased usage message: The role of elaborative processing

This research examines consumer reactions to an emerging trend among corporate social responsibility initiatives—the promotion of decreased usage of the company's own core products. The results across three experiments suggest that the presence of a decreased usage message that highlights incongruity between the marketing message and the company's goals leads to negative company evaluations. The authors demonstrate that elaborative processing underlies these effects by examining the moderating role of the need for cognition and cognitive load. Further, perceived incongruity and cognitive elaboration mediate the findings. The implications for marketers and consumers are discussed.     

U.S. Muslim women and body image: links among objectification theory constructs and the hijab

This study tested tenets of objectification theory and explored the role of the hijab in body image and eating disorder symptoms with a sample of 118 Muslim women in the United States. Results from a path analysis indicated that individual differences in wearing the hijab were related negatively with reported sexual objectification experiences. Sexual objectification experiences, in turn, had significant positive indirect relations with body surveillance, body shame, and eating disorder symptoms, primarily through the mediating role of internalization. Internalization of cultural standards of beauty also had a significant positive direct relation with body shame and significant positive direct and indirect relations with eating disorder symptoms. By contrast, the direct and indirect relations of body surveillance were significant only when the role of internalization was constrained to 0 (i.e., eliminated), suggesting that internalization of cultural standards of beauty subsumed the hypothesized role of body surveillance in the model. Taken together, these results support some of the tenets of objectification theory with a sample of U.S. Muslim women, point to the importance of internalization of dominant cultural standards of beauty within that framework, and suggest the utility of considering individual differences in wearing the hijab among U.S. Muslim women.     

The drive for muscularity in men: Media influences and objectification theory

Presently, objectification theory has yielded mixed results when utilized to explain body image concerns in men. An online survey assessing internalization of media ideals, self-objectification, body surveillance, body shame, the drive for muscularity, and body mass index (BMI) was completed by 244 predominantly college-aged males. Path analyses were used to investigate relationships among these variables where it was hypothesized that objectification variables would mediate the relationship between internalization of media ideals and the drive for muscularity. Internalization of media ideals was the strongest predictor of the drive for muscularity, followed by BMI, though variables of objectification theory had no impact on the drive for muscularity contrary to hypotheses. The results suggest that objectification theory may not be applicable to men as it is currently measured.     

The evaluation of effectiveness and likability of gender-role congruent and gender-role incongruent leaders

The aim of the present study was to test the gender-role congruency hypothesis in the context of assumed leadership. Three hundred and forty-two female and 154 male Dutch students participated in a laboratory experiment. We expected that gender-role incongruent leaders would be evaluated less favorably than gender-role congruent leaders and that male subjects would devalue the gender-role incongruent leaders to a greater extent than would female subjects. In addition, we were interested in the relative contribution of the effectiveness and likability measures to the devaluation of gender-role incongruent leaders. The gender-role congruency hypothesis was supported by the data from male subjects only, and then only for the effectiveness measures. The results are discussed in the context of two meta-analyses concerning the impact of gender stereotypes on judgments of competence and evaluation of leaders.     

Objectifying Sarah Palin: Evidence that objectification causes women to be perceived as less competent and less fully human

Although a great deal of research has examined the effects of objectification on women’s self-perceptions and behavior, empirical research has yet to address how objectifying a woman affects the way she is perceived by others. We hypothesize that focusing on a woman’s appearance will promote reduced perceptions of competence, and also, by virtue of construing the women as an “object”, perceptions of the woman as less human. We found initial experimental evidence for these hypotheses as a function of objectifying two targets - Sarah Palin and Angelina Jolie. In addition, focusing on Palin’s appearance reduced intentions to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket (prior to the 2008 US Presidential election). We discuss these findings in the context of the election and the objectification of women.     

Perceptions of childfree women: The role of perceivers' and targets' ethnicity

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of ethnicity on perceptions of voluntary childfree women. We were interested in determining whether mothers were viewed as more stereotypically positive than women without children and how the ethnicity of the participant and the target impacted participants' ratings. We utilized vignettes and manipulated motherhood status and ethnicity of the target. Participants (n = 224) were comprised of female university students in the southwestern region of the United States. Results indicated that women view childfree women negatively. Moreover, women view African American mothers more favourably than childfree African American women. Results are discussed in terms of gender roles in communities of colour. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sexual submissiveness in women: costs for sexual autonomy and arousal

Women are bombarded with images of women's sexual submission and subservience to male partners. The authors argue that women internalize this submissive role, namely, they associate sex implicitly with submission. The authors propose that this association leads to submissive sexual behavior, thereby reducing sexual autonomy and arousal. Study 1 found that women implicitly associated sex with submission. Study 2 showed that women's implicit association of sex with submission predicted greater personal adoption of a submissive sexual role. Study 3 found that men did not implicitly associate sex with submission. Study 4 demonstrated that women's adoption of a submissive sexual role predicted lower reported arousal and greater reported difficulty becoming sexually aroused; sexual autonomy mediated these effects.     

Sexual orientation and handedness in men and women: a meta-analysis

Recent findings suggest that sexual orientation has an early neurodevelopmental basis. Handedness, a behavioral marker of early neurodevelopment, has been associated with sexual orientation in some studies but not in others. The authors conducted a meta-analysis of 20 studies that compared the rates of non-right-handedness in 6,987 homosexual (6,182 men and 805 women) and 16,423 heterosexual (14,808 men and 1,615 women) participants. Homosexual participants had 39% greater odds of being non-right-handed. The corresponding values for homosexual men (20 contrasts) and women (9 contrasts) were 34% and 91%, respectively. The results support the notion that sexual orientation in some men and women has an early neurodevelopmental basis, but the factors responsible for the handedness-sexual orientation association require elucidation. The authors discuss 3 possibilities: cerebral laterality and prenatal exposure to sex hormones, maternal immunological reactions to the fetus, and developmental instability.     

The poehlman case: running away from the truth

Eric T. Poehlman, Ph.D., was an internationally recognized, tenured professor at the University of Vermont (UVM) in Burlington when, in October 2000, a junior member of Poehlman’s laboratory became convinced that he had altered data from a study on aging volunteers from the Burlington area. This suspicion developed into one of the most significant cases of scientific misconduct in the history of the US Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Research Integrity (ORI), launching a US Department of Justice (DOJ) civil and criminal fraud investigation and, eventually, to a much publicized guilty plea and felony conviction. In the end, Dr. Poehlman admitted to 54 findings of scientific misconduct made by the UVM and ORI, agreed to retract or correct ten of his publications and to exclude himself from federal procurement and nonprocurement transactions for life. The United States Government’s handling of this case was distinguished by a highly cooperative approach that integrated the resources of the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont (USAO) and both ORI and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in HHS in the common goal of prosecuting research fraud. The content of this article represents the personal views of the authors and does not express the opinion or policy of DHHS or its components. A paper on this topic was presented at the 6th International Bioethics Conference on the subject of ‘The Responsible Conduct of Basic and Clinical Research’, held in Warsaw, Poland, 3–4 June 2005.     

The effect of interethnic ideologies on the likability of stereotypic vs. counterstereotypic minority targets

This paper examines the effect of interethnic ideologies on the likability of stereotypic vs. counterstereotypic minority targets. In two experiments, participants were exposed to either a multicultural or colorblind prime and subsequently asked to indicate their impressions of a stereotypic or counterstereotypic minority target. Results suggest that multiculturalism and colorblindness have different effects on the likability of minority targets to the extent that such targets confirm the existence of fixed or permeable ethnic group boundaries. Specifically, a stereotypic target was liked more than a counterstereotypic target when participants were exposed to multiculturalism - suggesting that multiculturalism creates a preference for individuals who remain within the boundaries of their ethnicity. Conversely, a counterstereotypic target was liked more than a stereotypic target when participants were exposed to colorblindness - suggesting that colorblindness creates a preference for individuals who permeate the boundaries of their ethnicity. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

The "process" of running away: a redefinition

Unlike much of the research on runaway behavior in the last half decade, the present effort does not use legal definitions or individual motives to define a runaway. Rather, it views the designation as a "social process." The concept of "career" is central to this effort in that it allows for an identification of where in the overall process young persons see themselves. In general, becoming a runaway is conceived as a process of action and reaction, which unfolds over time. Becoming a runaway is the end product of a person's actions, reason, and symbols.