The Effect Of Self-objectification On Women’s Evaluation Of The Importance Of Internal And External Qualities

Fredrickson and Roberts(1997)put forward the objectification theory and pointed out that in the context of sexual objectification,women tend to internalize themselves from the perspective of a third party.Self-objectification comes from the theory of objectification,which refers to the psychological process in which women internalize the perspective of a third party and examine and evaluate their own body as an object.In an objectified environment,women often habitually monitor their own bodies,so they pay more attention to their own external characteristics,and ignore the ability,intelligence,temperament and other internal qualities.A review of previous literature reveals that few studies have directly explored the relationship between self-objectification and evaluation of the importance of internal and external qualities.Under the background of Chinese culture to explore female self-objectification relationship with the importance of internal and external quality assessment,can not only verify the cross-cultural adaptation of the theory of self-objectification,can also reveal the contemporary female cognitive characteristics of importance to their own quality,to help women to form correct self-awareness,alleviate gender anxiety in women.In the first study,850 female participants were used to examine the relationship between self-objectification and the evaluation of the importance of internal and external qualities using the Body Monitoring Scale and the Life Field Importance Questionnaire.The results showed that self-objectification had a significant positive correlation with external quality importance evaluation and a significant negative correlation with internal quality importance evaluation.Self-objectification positively predicted the external quality importance evaluation and negatively predicted the internal quality importance evaluation.In the second study,142 female subjects were used to explore the effects of self-objectification and social comparison on the evaluation of the importance of internal and external qualities in a 2(self-objectification: high,low)× 2(social comparison: comparison group,control group)between-groups design.The results showed that the external quality importance of high self-objectification group was significantly higher than that of low self-objectification group,and the internal quality importance of high self-objectification group was significantly lower than that of low self-objectification group.The importance of external quality in social comparison group was significantly higher than that in control group.The interaction between self-objectification and social comparison was significant.Under the condition of high self-objectification,the external quality importance score of the social comparison group was significantly higher than that of the control group.In the low self-objectification condition,the result is not significant.In the third study,129 women with high levels of self-objectification were used as subjects.A 2(social comparison: comparison group,control group)× 2(media knowledge intervention: media intervention information group,neutral information group)between-groups design was used to explore the effects of social comparison and media knowledge intervention on high levels of self-objectification women.The results showed that the importance of external quality was significantly higher in the social comparison group than in the control group.The external quality importance score of the media information intervention group was significantly lower than that of the neutral information group,and the internal quality importance evaluation was significantly higher than that of the neutral information group.The interaction between social comparison and media knowledge intervention was significant.The above results indicate that :(1)Self-objectification causes women to value the appearance and ignore the internal qualities.(2)Social comparison will make women pay more attention to their own appearance,which has a greater impact on women with high self-objectification.(3)Media literacy interventions can make women value inner qualities more.