From bodies to blame: Exposure to sexually objectifying media increases tolerance toward sexual harassment.

Bernard, Philippe; Legrand, Sabine; Klein, Olivier

doi:10.1037/ppm0000114

Cited by 19 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…Fox, Ralston, Cooper, and Jones (2015) found that women who self-objectified due to exposure to sexualized avatars showed greater endorsement of rape myths than women exposed to non-sexualized avatars. Moreover, trait self-objectification was found to predict tolerance toward sexual harassment and more negative attitudes towards harassed victims in both men and women (Bernard et al, 2016). Accordingly, one might expect internalized sexualization levels to be related to more lenient views of sexual harassment and higher skepticism about allegations of sexual misconduct made through the #MeToo movement.…”

Section: Views Of Sexual Harassmentmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Views Of Sexual Harassmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Past work has also highlighted positive associations between women's sexual objectification and tolerance of sexual harassment (Bernard, Ledrand, & Klein, 2016;Milburn, Mather, & Conrad, 2000;Read, Lynch, & Matthews, 2018). People exposed to sexualized images of women attribute more blame and responsibility to rape victims (Bernard et al, 2016;Burgess & Burpo, 2012;Loughnan, Pina, Vasquez, & Puvia, 2013;Ward, 2016). Adolescent boys and girls expressed more tolerance of rape myths and sexual harassment after playing a video game with a sexualized vs. non sexualized female character (Driesmans, Vandenbosch, & Eggermont, 2015), and men were more likely to aggress against a woman who rejected them in a dating game when the woman wore sexualized vs. non-sexualized clothing (Blake, Hopkins, Sprunger, Eckhardt, & Denson, 2017).…”

Section: Views Of Sexual Harassmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Women and #MeToo in Italy: Internalized sexualization is associated with tolerance of sexual harassment and negative views of the #MeToo movement

et al. 2021

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As a consequence of exposure to sexualized messages, girls and women may internalize the belief that sexual attractiveness to men is an important aspect of their identity. Whereas research on internalized sexualization has mainly focused on its consequences for girls’ well-being and academic outcomes, the present study (N = 222, women, aged 20 to 29) examined whether internalized sexualization is related to sexist attitudes and tolerance of sexual harassment among young women. It also analyzed internalized sexualization’ links to women’s views of notorious sexual abuse allegations in the so-called Weinstein scandal and attitudes towards the #MeToo movement, a campaign aimed at combatting sexual harassment and sexual assault. The study was conducted in Italy, a context characterized by pervasive sexualized messages and diffuse criticism against the #MeToo movement. The findings showed that internalized sexualization was associated with stronger endorsement of sexist attitudes and higher acceptance of sexual harassment myths, which worked as sequential mediators of skepticism towards sexual abuse allegations in the Weinstein scandals. Endorsement of sexist attitudes mediated the relation between internalized sexualization and negative attitudes towards the #MeToo movement. This study extends the knowledge on the correlates of sexualization, suggesting that women’s internalization of the belief that they should be sexually attractive to men might contribute to reinforce ideologies and attitudes that perpetrate women’s mistreatment while diminishing support for social activism on women’s behalf.

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Section: Views Of Sexual Harassmentmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Views Of Sexual Harassmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Views Of Sexual Harassmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Women and #MeToo in Italy: Internalized sexualization is associated with tolerance of sexual harassment and negative views of the #MeToo movement

et al. 2021

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“…Sexualized women, for example, are held responsible for sexual victimization (Burt, 1980), despite the blame for sexual aggression falling squarely on perpetrators. Indeed, sexually objectified women are misperceived as more responsible for sexual violence including sexual assault (Bernard, Gervais, Allen, Delmée, & Klein, 2015;Loughnan, Pina, Vasquez, & Puvia, 2013;Rudman & Mescher, 2012) and sexual harassment (Bernard, Legrand, & Klein, 2018;Galdi, Maass, & Cadinu, 2014) than their humanized counterparts.…”

Section: Self-objectifying Behaviorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Social Interaction Model of Objectification: A process model of goal‐based objectifying exchanges between men and women

Gervais

Sáez

Riemer

et al. 2019

British J Social Psychol

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People perceive and treat women as sex objects in social exchanges. The interaction processes through which women are objectified, however, have rarely been considered. To address this gap in the literature, we propose the Social Interaction Model of Objectification (SIMO). Rooted in social exchange and objectification theories, the SIMO predicts objectifying behaviors stemming from sexual goals between men and women. We propose that the behavioral dynamics of objectification can be understood through a series of goal-based exchange processes that 1 digitalcommons.unl.edu

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“…For instance, altering configural face information (i.e., by presenting faces in an inverted position) impairs the ability to categorize faces as human and as possessing human-like traits (Hugenberg et al, 2016). Testing whether cognitive objectification of face causes dehumanization would enable to uncover the potential negative consequences of face objectification and related dehumanization (e.g., victim blaming: Loughnan et al, 2013; tolerance toward sexual harassment: Bernard, Legrand, & Klein, 2018).…”

Section: Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Face of Sexualization: Faces Wearing Makeup are Processed Less Configurally than Faces Without Makeup

Bernard

Geelhand

Servais

2019

rips

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Objectification Theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) suggests that women are reduced to their bodies and physical appearance in Western cultures, as illustrated by the pervasive use of sexualization in the media. Sexualization is a set of features that emphasize sexiness through a focus on body parts (e.g., women wearing revealing clothing) and face parts (e.g., flashy lipstick and "smoky eyes": Smolak, Murnen, & Myers, 2014). Content analyses of advertisements revealed that women's bodies and faces are frequently portrayed in a sexualized manner in visual media (Stankiewicz & Roselli, 2008). As a result, American women spend billions of dollars on cosmetics each year to meet these sexualized standards of beauty (Kumar, 2005), enhancing their perceived beauty and attractiveness (Graham & Jouhar, 1981). Cosmetics may also modulate impressions regarding women's personality, although research has found mixed results: Women wearing makeup are evaluated sometimes more positively (e.g., warmer), and often more negatively (e.g., less moral) (for a review, see Richetin, Huguet & Croizet, 2007). Beyond impression formation, very little is known regarding how makeup shapes the way people visually process women's faces. Indeed, most sexualization and objectification studies have focused on how people visually process and attribute mind to sexualized bodies appearing in mass media (for reviews, see Bernard, Gervais, & Klein, 2018; Ward, 2016). The present paper examines whether face sexualization −or the emphasis of sexiness through facial cues− changes the way people see ordinary women's faces. We suggest that face sexualization, akin to body sexualization, may trigger cognitive objectification. That is, that faces with makeup may be processed less configurally than faces without makeup. Cognitive Objectification: When People Are Cognitively Reduced to Their Parts Consistent with the tenets of Objectification Theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997), research has shown that sexualized female bodies are rated as lacking in mind and moral status (e.g., Loughnan et al., 2010) and as possessing less agency (Gray, Knobe, Sheskin, Bloom, Barrett, 2011), less uniquely human traits (Vaes, Paladino, & Puvia, 2011), less competence, less warmth and less morality (Bernard & Wollast, 2019) than nonsexualized women. Departing from this line of research that envisioned objectification through a content-focused approach (i.e., diminished attributions of human-like traits to a person), a recent body of research has started to examine the cognitive processes underpinning objectification. A vast literature in psychology and neuroscience demonstrates that people process a stimulus either as a global physical entity (i.e., configural processing), as if the focus was on the forest, or as a set of parts (i.e., analytic processing), as if the focus was on the trees (Maurer, Le Grand, & Maurer,

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From bodies to blame: Exposure to sexually objectifying media increases tolerance toward sexual harassment.

Cited by 19 publications

References 72 publications

Women and #MeToo in Italy: Internalized sexualization is associated with tolerance of sexual harassment and negative views of the #MeToo movement

Women and #MeToo in Italy: Internalized sexualization is associated with tolerance of sexual harassment and negative views of the #MeToo movement

The Social Interaction Model of Objectification: A process model of goal‐based objectifying exchanges between men and women

The Face of Sexualization: Faces Wearing Makeup are Processed Less Configurally than Faces Without Makeup

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