The Effect Of Media Information On College Female Students' Self-objectification

Self-objectification is the view of self from the third person's perspective,treating his/her body as an object(Fredrickson&Roberts,1997).Numerous studies showed that self-objectification can have negative effects on women:low performance,low self-efficacy,low intrinsic motivation,and negative physical emotions(Fredrickson,Roberts,Noll,Quinn&Twenge,1998;Noll&Fredrickson,1998;Roberts&Gettman,2004;Tiggemann&Lynch,2001).Objectifying media is one of the important factors that cause women's self-objectification,through which transferring the information of "women should be sexy" and strengthening it repeatedly.It can make women enjoy the sexualization process(Enjoyment of Sexualization)and cause the self-objectifies of women.Based on the review of relevant documents and theories,we expected that media information can influence the self-objectification of women,and the enjoyment of sexualization plays an mediating role between objectifying media and self-objectification.That is,the objectifying media will increase the enjoyment of sexualization of women,which leads to self-objectification.At the same time,social comparison will moderate the above mediation effect.Compared to the low level of social comparison women,the mediation effect is only significant for women with high social comparison tendency.The current study used between-subjects design.156 female college students from Jilin University were selected as the research subjects(M=20.88;SD=2.32).The subjects were randomly assigned to the experimental group and control group.The subjects in the experimental group were presented music videos with high objectifying information,and the control group was presented music videos with low objectifying information.Using SPSS21.0 for statistical analysis,the results showed that:1.Female college students in the experimental group had higher self-objectification and body surveillance than the control group.2.The upward social comparison and the downward social comparison effected on self-objectification.The higher the tendency of social comparison,the higher the degree of self-objectification.3.Enjoyment of sexualization was positively correlated with self-objectification and physical monitoring.4.The interactions between media information and the upward and downward social comparisons were both significant.This study provided some enlightenment to reduce the negative influence of objectifying media on female self-objectification.