Reduced neural empathy for women wearing revealing clothes

The participants watched women being rejected in a ball-passing game (the black blocks over their eyes did not appear in the actual study); from Cogoni et al 2018 By Christian Jarrett Psychologists define objectification as when we look upon a person and think about them more in terms of their bodies than their minds, and see them as less capable than normal of having their own self-control and will. Any context that encourages us to focus on a person’s body, more than their mind, is said to lead to objectification, such as when, in a previous era, a Formula One fan looked upon an attractive “grid girl” dressed in revealing clothes. Perhaps the most serious concern about objectification is that it can lead us to disregard the rights and experiences of the objectified person. For instance, past research has shown that we’re more inclined to blame a rape victim depicted in a bikini, and more willing to (hypothetically) administer painful tablets to men and women shown wearing swim wear, rather than fully clothed. Now a study in Cortex has taken things further by showing that volunteers’ empathy-related brain activity was diminished when they saw an objectified woman suffering social rejection, as compared with a woman who wasn’t objectified. Carlotta Cogoni at the University of Trento, and her colleagues scanned the brains of 36 young adult participants (including 19 women) while they played or watched a simple ball-passing game over the...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Brain Forensic Gender Sex Source Type: blogs