Seeing women as objects: The sexual body part recognition bias

Abstract

Objectification theory suggests that the bodies of women are sometimes reduced to their sexual body parts. As well, an extensive literature in cognitive psychology suggests that global processing underlies person recognition, whereas local processing underlies object recognition. Integrating these literatures, we introduced and tested the sexual body part recognition bias hypothesis that women’s (versus men’s) bodies would be reduced to their sexual body parts in the minds of perceivers. Specifically, we adopted the parts versus whole body recognition paradigm, which is a robust indicator of local versus global processing. The findings across two experiments showed that women’s bodies were reduced to their sexual body parts in perceivers’ minds. We also found that local processing contributed to the sexual body part recognition bias, whereas global processing tempered it. Implications for sexual objectification and its underlying processes and motives are discussed

Toward a Unified Theory of Objectification and Dehumanization

“…We have suggested and found preliminary evidence for the notion that people adopt a local appraisal of women, including focusing on their appearances, bodies, or sexual body parts and functions, rather than a global appraisal of women, focusing on women as entire people (Bernard et al 2012;Gervais et al 2012). Although not tested specifically within the context of sexual objectification, this idea and related research is consistent with previous work showing links between sex and local processing more generally (Förster 2010).…”

“…Our work provides direct evidence for this during initial person perception stages, including attention , recognition (Bernard et al 2012(Bernard et al , 2013aGervais et al 2012), and categorization (Gervais et al 2011a) of women's bodies. Indirect evidence for other stages of the model, including local objectified impression formation (Cikara et al 2010;Heflick and Goldenberg 2009;Heflick et al 2011;Loughnan et al 2010;Vaes et al 2011) and objectified attitudes and behaviors (Rudman and Mescher 2012) comes from our reinterpretation of published research.…”

“…Men's whole bodies were recognized better than men's sexual body parts, similar to person recognition. This effect emerges for sexualized and non-sexualized men and women, suggesting that people not only adopt a local perspective of women who are sexualized and highly attractive (e.g., models, Bernard et al 2013a), but also on those who are not sexualized and are average in attractiveness (e.g., everyday women, Gervais et al 2012).…”

“…That is, women sometimes are reduced from their appearances and entire bodies to their sexual body parts (Bernard et al 2012(Bernard et al , 2013aGervais et al 2011aGervais et al , 2012Gervais et al , 2013. Behaviors thought to manifest from this local appraisal of women, for example the objectifying gaze characterized as more attention to sexual body parts (e.g., women's breasts) than other body parts (e.g., women's faces), have negative consequences for women (Gervais et al 2011b;Saguy et al 2010).…”

“…To consider whether women's bodies are reduced specifically to their sexual body parts, we examined whether people would recognize women's (vs. men's) sexual body parts in isolation without requiring the spatial information about relations among the sexual body parts provided by the context of the entire body (similar to object recognition, Gervais et al 2012). Specifically, we hypothesized that women's sexual body parts would be recognized similarly regardless of whether they were presented in the context of entire bodies or in isolation (whole body recognition = body part recognition), whereas men's sexual body parts would be recognized better when they were presented in the context of entire bodies, rather than in isolation (whole body recognition > body part recognition).…”