A Picture is Worth Twenty Words (About the Self): Testing the Priming Influence of Visual Sexual Objectification on Women's Self-Objectification

Abstract

Extending a major premise of objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997 Fredrickson , B. L. , & Roberts , T.-A. ( 1997 ). Objectification theory: Toward understanding women's lived experiences and mental health risks . Psychology of Women Quarterly , 21 , 173 – 206 . [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar] ), this article tests the notion that visual depictions of sexual objectification of women's bodies can amplify women's state self-objectification (SO) in the short term. After deriving two operationalizations of sexual objectification that conformed to the tenets of objectification theory, results showed that women who were assigned to images of female models with high skin exposure (the first operationlization of sexual objectification) used more negative words to describe their appearance than participants assigned to control images. In addition, the body-display images produced more state SO and more negativity about one's appearance than images of women segmented into body parts (which represented the second operationalization). Implications for objectification theory and media priming effects are discussed.