Sexual Objectification And Self-Objectification: Investigating The Relationship And The Underlying Neurocognitive Mechanism

Sexual objectification occurs when a woman’s body, body parts, or sexual functions are separated from her entire person, thus reducing her status to that of a mere instrument, as if this was capable of representing an entire person. Sexual objectification is very pervasive and is regularly portrayed in the media and through interpersonal acts such as whistling, openly gazing at women’s bodies, and sexually suggestive comments. As in Western culture, sexual objectification is prevalent in China. For example, terms that objectify women by their body parts, such as “beautiful leg queen” and “beautiful bosom queen” frequently appear in many news reports, and newspaper headlines typically use such terms as “chest,” and “legs” in order to attract consumer attention. Numerous studies have demonstrated that by living constantly in a culture of sexual objectification, women and girls come to adopt and internalize a third-person perspective of their physical selves in which they see themselves as an object. This perspective of the self has been termed self-objectification, and it often manifests as habitual body monitoring(i.e., body surveillance). Self-objectification and body surveillance, then, may have negative consequences for women, leading to increased body shame and appearance anxiety, decreased awareness of internal states, and reduced capacity to reach peak motivational states, which in turn lead to mental problems such as eating disorders, depression, and sexual dysfunction.Recently, some researchers have begun to be concerned with the cognitive processes involved in sexual objectification. They have noted that sexual objectification may involve the local appraisal of a person, but there is still great controversy regarding this conclusion, and there is a lack of validation and support from cognitive neuroscience. In addition, self-objectification is a personality trait that in turn may affect sexual objectification. Studies have shown that higher self-objectification among both women and men was related to increased objectification of other women and men. Given this view, do high self-objectifiers show more sexual objectifying behavior in their daily lives? Because of the complexity of sexual objectification and because it may involve social desirability, it is very difficult to directly examine it in a laboratory situation. Therefore, few experiments have explored it. In addition, high self-objectifiers use a local appraisal style for their own bodies, but do they adopt this same perspective of others? Furthermore, does this perspective affect the neurocognitive mechanism of sexual objectification? These issues need to be further investigated. Therefore, the current studies used various methods to investigate the relationship between sexual objectification and self-objectification. In Study 1, questionnaires were used to explore the influence of sexual objectification on self-objectification by testing a full model of objectification theory in a sample of Chinese college students. In Study 2, we used an eye-tracking device to examine the influence of self-objectification on sexual objectification. Based on the results of Study 2, in Study 3, we further investigated the impact of self-objectification on the neurocognitive mechanisms of sexual objectification using functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI) technology.Study 1 investigated the influence of sexual objectification on self-objectification using the questionnaire method. Experiment l examined the applicability of the model of objectification theory to Chinese college students and the mechanism underlying how sexual objectification affects mental health via self-objectification. The results showed that objectification theory also applies to Chinese male and female college students. For female students, sexual objectification promoted self-objectification, manifested as habitual body monitoring. Body surveillance led to greater body shame and appearance anxiety, which in turn led to eating disorders and depression. However, inconsistent with objectification theory, internal awareness mediated the relationships between body shame and appearance anxiety and two outcome variables(eating disorders and depression), while flow mediated the relationships between appearance anxiety and the outcome variables. For male college students, sexual objectification promoted self-objectification, manifested as more frequent body monitoring. Body surveillance led to greater appearance anxiety, which in turn led to eating disorders and depression. Yet, inconsistent with objectification theory, internal awareness mediated the relationships between appearance anxiety and the two outcome variables. In addition, sexual objectification directly or indirectly affected eating disorders and depression through internal awareness and flow.Study 2 utilized an eye-tracking device to explore the influence of self-objectification on sexual objectification. Experiment 2 compared the eye movement characteristics of low self-objectifiers and high self-objectifiers when viewing the objectified pictures(pictures of people wearing either a swimsuit or underwear) and non-objectified pictures(pictures of fully clothed people). It was found that participants displayed a higher fixation count, longer dwell time, and longer first fixation duration on the faces of non-objectified targets than on objectified targets. Participants also gazed at the objectified targets’ chests and waists for a longer duration and with a longer first fixation duration than non-objectified targets. These findings demonstrated that participants exhibited an objectifying gaze in the high-objectification condition(when viewing swimsuit photos), focusing on the chests and waists more, and on the faces less, which suggests that the bare-skin objectified pictures can effectively arouse sexual objectifying behaviors. Whether objectified pictures or non-objectified pictures, female high self-objectifiers gazed at the chests and waists of targets more than female low self-objectifiers, but the dwell time for faces did not significantly differ from that of low self-objectifiers. Compared to male low self-objectifiers, male high self-objectifiers showed a longer dwell time on the faces of targets, but the dwell time for the chests and waists was not significantly different from that of the low self-objectifiers. These results suggest that self-objectification affects sexual objectification, with high self-objectifiers showing more objectifying behaviors of others, especially for female subjects.Experiment 3 investigated whether there is an automatic cognitive mechanism underlying the influence of self-objectification on sexual objectification and the relationship between self-objectification, sexual objectification, and dehumanizing perceptions. The participants rated the intelligence of each person portrayed in a series of pictures. Eye movements were recorded with an Eye Link 1000 eye tracker while participants individually viewed and rated the pictures. The results showed that regardless of the subject’s gender, both objectified women and men were attributed with less intelligence than non-objectified targets. The eye movement tracking revealed that the fixation count on the chests of the objectified targets was significantly higher than for the non-objectified targets. The dwell time and first fixation duration for the chests of objectified targets were significantly longer than for non-objectified targets, but the dwell time and first fixation duration for the faces of objectified targets were both significantly shorter than for non-objectified targets. These results suggest that people show automatic cognition of sexual objectification for objectified targets in the high-objectification condition. Futhermore, people exhibit an objectifying gaze in the process of forming their perceptions of objectified targets, offering direct evidence that sexual objectification affects social cognition. For both high self-objectifiers and low self-objectifiers, male objectified targets were perceived as being more intelligent than objectified female targets. Compared with low self-objectifiers, high self-objectifiers perceived the objectified targets to be less intelligent. These findings imply that the effect of self-objectification on sexual objectification and perception involves an automatic cognitive process, with high self-objectifiers showing more dehumanizing perception of objectified female targets. However, in terms of the eye movement index, high self-objectifiers did not exhibit an objectifying gaze for female objectified targets. The results indicate that the influence of sexual objectification on cognition is not simply caused by local attention and that there may be a more complex psychological and cognitive mechanism.Study 3 explored the influence of self-objectification on the neurocognitive mechanisms of sexual objectification through three experiments. In Experiment 4, we adopted the inversion effect paradigm to explore the cognitive processing of sexual objectification and the impact of self-objectification on cognitive style. Objectified and non-objectified pictures were presented either upright or upside down, and the participants’ task was to determine whether two successive images were the same or not. It was found that an inversion effect occurred for both objectified and non-objectified images, with all images being recognized more accurately when upright than when inverted. An inversion effect was demonstrated for both objectified male and female images showing that participants did not use local processing for objectified targets(object-like recognition), instead adopting a global appraisal style(person-like recognition). Furthermore, self-objectification was not associated with a change of recognition accuracy of objectified targets. These results indicate that sexual objectification may not simply equate objectified targets to objects, but that there may be more complex neural mechanisms.Experiment 5 used fMRI technology to investigate the neural mechanism of sexual objectification; the activation patterns of brain regions were compared when participants were viewing objectified and non-objectified images. The findings showed that the right middle temporal gyrus, the right posterior cingulate, the right superior frontal gyrus, and the right medial frontal gyrus exhibited significantly greater activity in response to viewing objectified male targets compared to viewing non-objectified male targets. The posterior cingulate and the medial frontal gyrus are closely connected with social cognition. The results indicate that, compared with non-objectified male targets, participants may find the social cognitive processing of objectified male targets more difficult, which provides an explanation of the neural mechanisms for dehumanizing objectified male targets. Furthermore, compared to female participants, the bilateral middle temporal gyrus, the right middle temporal gyrus, and the right medial frontal gyrus exhibited significantly greater activity when male participants viewed objectified female targets. The findings suggest that, compared with male participants, female participants may find the social cognitive processing of objectified female targets more difficult, which offers a neuroscientific explanation of why women more objectified other women than men. However, the comparison of the brain activation patterns in response to viewing objectified female and non-objectified female targets showed that there was no difference in the activation of the two types of images in the social cognitive brain areas. Yet, the right medial frontal gyrus exhibited significantly greater activity in response to viewing objectified female targets compared to objectified male targets. These results partially support our hypothesis, indicating that sexual objectification may involve the same or similar cognitive and neural mechanisms of dehumanization, offering an explanation of the neural mechanism of depersonalization in sexual objectification.Experiment 6 examined the influence of self-objectification on the neural mechanisms of sexual objectification. The brain activation patterns were compared between low self-objectifiers and high self-objectifiers for objectified female targets > non-objectified female targets, objectified male targets > non-objectified male targets. The results showed that compared to high self-objectifiers, there was significantly greater activity the right inferior frontal gyrus, the insula, the right medial frontal gyrus, left postcentral gyrus, and left cerebellar anterior lobe when low self-objectifiers viewed objectified female targets in objectified female targets > non-objectified female targets. The right medial frontal gyrus was activated less in the high self-objectifiers, indicating that self-objectification affects the cognitive neural mechanism of sexual objectification. This finding provides an explanation of the cognitive neural mechanism of high self-objectifiers showing more depersonalized human perception to objectified female targets. However, there was no difference in the activation of the medial frontal gyrus brain area between high self-objectifiers and low self-objectifiers for objectified male targets > non-objectified male targets. On the contrary, it found that compared to low self-objectifiers, high self-objectifiers showed greater activity in the right temporal gyrus, right middle temporal gyrus, and right medial frontal gyrus.From the three studies, we can draw the following conclusions. First, objectification theory also applies to Chinese male and female college students. The experience of sexual objectification promotes self-objectification, which is manifested as habitual body monitoring. Body surveillance leads to greater body shame and appearance anxiety, which in turn leads to eating disorders and depression. Second, self-objectification affects sexual objectifying behaviors; eye movement tracking revealed that female high self-objectifiers show more objectifying gaze, more attention to the body, less concern with the face, and that female high self-objectifiers are more likely to sexually objectify others. Third, sexual objectification influences social cognition, because when people are sexually objectified, they are perceived as having less mental states; self-objectification affects this social cognition, with high self-objectifiers exhibiting more dehumanizing perception of objectified targets, which involving an automatic cognitive process. Fourth, individuals do not use local processing for objectified targets. Fifth, self-objectification affects the cognitive neural mechanism of sexual objectification, with the right medial frontal gyrus being activated less when high self-objectifiers viewed objectified female targets. The reduction in the medial prefrontal cortex activation may be the brain mechanism that underlies high self-objectifiers exhibiting more dehumanizing perception of objectified targets.In conclusion, the present study is the first systematic investigation of the applicability of objectification theory to Chinese male and female college students. This study enriches and expands objectification theory, and provides a guideline for the prevention of, and intervention for, eating disorders and depression in university students. At the same time, from the perspective of both behavioral and cognitive mechanisms, our study is the first to methodically explore the influence of self-objectification on sexual objectification. The present study proved that an interaction exists between sexual objectification and self-objectification. Sexual objectification promotes self-objectification, while self-objectification, in turn, affects sexual objectification and cognitive neural mechanisms. The results extend understanding of the behavioral and cognitive mechanisms of sexual objectification. Future research should develop and improve the experimental paradigm by considering cultural factors and ecological validity in order to further explore the relationship between sexual objectification and self-objectification.