Experimental manipulations of objectification and self-objectification
Researchers have used a variety of lab-based methods to manipulate women’s objectification or self-objectification, each with strengths and weaknesses. We selected our manipulations using several criteria. First, we aimed to distinguish between interpersonal objectification manipulations and manipulations that increase women’s appearance focus but do not have an interpersonal element. In previous studies, interpersonal manipulations have included anticipating or being the target of a sexualized gaze or receiving an appearance compliment; non-interpersonal manipulations have included trying on a bathing suit or being photographed/video recorded. We used a non-interpersonal self-objectification manipulation that we believed would increase women’s awareness of their own appearance (being videotaped from the neck down), and for our “male gaze” condition added an interpersonal element by telling women their video would later be evaluated by men. We also prioritized a believable experimental scenario; few women were removed from analyses for expressing doubts about the “male gaze” condition’s cover story.As hypothesized, the women in our study experienced a moderate increase in state self-objectification when recorded from the neck down by a video camera. We hypothesized that women would experience even greater state self-objectification when anticipating a man would later evaluate this video for a dating study. The original formulation of Objectification Theory [Without a significant difference in state self-objectification between the self-objectification and male gaze conditions, we were unable to explore the potential impact of interpersonal objectification (i.e., an anticipated male gaze) when compounded with an environmental trigger of self-objectification (i.e., being video recorded). Future researchers should distinguish objectification manipulations that result in increased appearance-focus (e.g., the use of cameras or mirrors) from manipulations of interpersonal objectification (e.g., appearance compliments from a confederate) and be clear about which they are attempting to manipulate in their study. Our results may suggest adding an interpersonal form of objectification, like an anticipated male gaze, does not heighten a woman’s appearance monitoring beyond environmental scenarios (i.e., being video recorded). It is also possible that our interpersonal objectification manipulation was too weak. More specifically, women may not have experienced the manipulation as sexual objectification because they knew their video would be anonymous (showing them only from the neck down) and knew they would not interact with the men who viewed their video. Future well-powered studies could investigate whether there is a differential impact on women’s cognitive performance after being the target of an actual male gaze via a confederate as in Gervais et al. [Further, unlike experiments where an appearance compliment was the key manipulation [The video manipulation used in this study was selected to mimic how women experience objectification simply by being looked at, absent additional triggers, like a revealing outfit (e.g., a bathing suit [Objectification theory proposes that when objectified, a portion of a woman’s conscious attention is diverted to monitor her appearance. Thus, we would expect that, regardless of the strength of the manipulation, experiencing greater body surveillance during the working memory task would be associated with greater latency and reduced accuracy on the working memory task. However, we found no association between higher body surveillance and response latency or accuracy within or across conditions.