TORONTO – New research has found clues as to why women are often the targets of sexual objectification-and it has to do with how our brains perceive images.
The study, published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, was led by Sarah Gervais, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It suggests two different cognitive processes are at work when we see images of women versus images of men.
When looking at images of men, perceivers in the study used their “global” processing. This is the mental method where a person is perceived as a whole and has been known in scientific literature to underlie person recognition. But when images of women were presented, “local” processing was used, meaning that the image was viewed as a collection of its parts. Local processing has previously been shown to underlie object recognition.
The study randomly showed participants dozens of images of clothed, average-looking women and men from head to knee with eyes focused on the camera. “Men and women were equal in size and attractiveness,” according to the study.
After a pause with a blank screen, participants then saw two images: one unmodified containing the original image, and another slightly modified version of the original with a modified sexual body part (see page 10 of the full study below for sample images). The participants had to press a key to indicate which of the two images they’d seen before.
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The results showed that women’s sexual body parts were more easily recognized when isolated than when part of the entire body. Men’s sexual body parts, on the other hand, were better recognized when shown in context of their entire bodies rather than when isolated.
A notable finding was that both men and women exhibited this perception bias.
“Most theorists have suggested that men objectify and women are objectified,” writes Gervais in an email to Globalnews.ca. “However, our studies also show that both men and women can find themselves in the role as objectifiers.”
Gervais says it’s unclear why both sexes are objectifying, but suggests some possible reasons.
“Both genders could be doing this because of exposure to objectified images of women in the media, but men could be doing it as they seek potential mates and women could be doing it for social comparisons purposes,” she writes.
Gervais also notes that there was a low number of gay men, lesbians and bisexuals in their study sample, so there was not enough data to show whether there are significant differences in perception on the basis of sexual orientation.
She also notes that when the experiment was adjusted so that participants were primed to use their global processing skills, the sexual body part recognition bias was lessened.
This was done by showing letter mosaics where larger letters were composed of smaller letters (e.g. a large E composed of many small Ts) and breaking participants into a global group and a local group. The participants in the global condition were asked to identify the larger global letter (the E) and participants in the local condition were asked to identify the smaller, local letters (the Ts). After this task, women were more easily recognizable in the context of their whole bodies instead of their body parts, but only for those participants in the global condition.
“There are many factors that impact global or local processing, including mood, abstract thinking, creativity, threat, and individualistic or collectivist orientations,” explains Gervais. “Thus, for example, people who are more collectivist like those from East Asian cultures may be more likely to adopt global processing, reducing this effect in that population.”
Gervais believes one of the most interesting findings is that her research applies to average-looking women, and not just women seen in magazines, television or film.
“It’s also striking that this is happening for everyday, ordinary women because we often think of this phenomenon as limited to the highly sexually objectified images of women that we find in media advertising,” she writes.
Stay tuned for future publications as Gervais is currently researching whether women who self-objectify are more likely to show this effect when they view other women. But for now, take a look at the newly-published paper embedded below:
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