Study Of The Effects Of Power On Sexual Objectification

Sexual objectification refers to evaluate women in terms of their bodies or body parts or sexual function,and regard the body parts or collection of body parts as instrument or the representative of women itself.Once sexual objectified,women would be regarded as merely the body or body parts for others' use and pleasure,regardless of their humanity and personality.Women are the main object of sexual objectification,while men are the subject.So far,researches have suggested that sexual objectification is prevalent in Western cultures,and research have suggested that culture norms play an important role.There is more sexual objectification in Western cultures,while less in Eastern cultures.Experience of sexual objectification facilities self-objectification,and caused several negative influence for women.Researcher indicated that power increased sexual objectification to others.In psychology,power refers to the ability to influence or control others or important resources or the ability to administrate punishment or award.Possessing power can activate the tendency of approaching,and attention to reward but avoid punishment.However,the behavior is merely to meet the personal goal of power holders,and power facilitates perceivers to regard other people as instruments or tools to accomplish their personal goals,that is,power increases sexual objectification.In addition,the way how power conveyed and expressed would matter much in respect to the effect of power on social cognition.Previous researches have suggested the universally existence of sexual objectification,but most of studies were conducted in Western society.It is acknowledged that Chinese culture founded on Confusion culture,which advocates strict sexual attitude and strict superior and subordinate attitude.In this case,is there more sexual objectification for power holders than those powerless? This is one of questions which we want to explore.On the other hand,sexual objectification can be regarded as one of gender oppress,indicating sexism attitude.Is there any difference between explicit power cues and implicit power cues? This is the other questions we want to explore.In addition,we adopted ERP technology and body inversion paradigm to explore the neuromechanism underlies the effect of power on sexual objectification.Study 1,we presented explicit power cues via recalling power experience,and adopted body inversion paradigm to collected participants' accuracy rates and reaction times when recognizing stimuli images.The results indicated that for those participants with high power,when recognizing sexualized women,body inversion effect did not emerge,that is,participants processed sexualized women more analytically and sexual objectify sexualized women;however,when recognizing sexualized men,body inversion effect did emerge,that is,participants processed sexualized men more configurally,there was no sexual objectification.Neither the low-power condition,nor the control condition did the sexual objectification emerge.Study 2,we presented implicit power cues to participants through power-related words searching task and also adopted body inversion paradigm.The results indicated that body inversion effect did emerge when participants recognizing sexualized women and men targets.That is,participants processed both sexualized men and women more configurally,and sexual objectification did not emerge.Implicit power cues matter less than explicit power cues.Study 3,we adopted ERP to explore the neuromechanism of the effects of power when participants recognizing sexualized women and men.We analyzed the amplitude and latency of N170 component under different experiment conditions to explore body inversion effect.Results indicated that,for those participants in high-power condition,there was significant difference between upright men and inverted men targets on the amplitude of N170,and body inversion effect emerged,that is,there was no sexual objectification.However,there was no significant difference between upright women and inverted women on the amplitude of N170,and body inversion effect did not emerge,that is,there was sexual objectification.Participants in low-power condition did not do that.Our investigation indicated that,there is sexual objectification for power holders in China.However,the way power cues conveyed and presented matters.The effect of explicit power may be more significant than implicit power.Also,we supported ERP evidence for the existence of sexual objectification among Chinese.Power and sexual objectification are both usual in our daily life.Individuals,especially women,would benefit from the exploring the effect of power on sexual objectification,to live a better life.