How does it feel to be treated like an object? Direct and indirect effects of exposure to sexual objectification on women's emotions in daily life.

How does it feel to be treated like an object? Direct and indirect effects of exposure to sexual objectification on women's emotions in daily life. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2019 Apr 29;: Authors: Koval P, Holland E, Zyphur MJ, Stratemeyer M, Knight JM, Bailen NH, Thompson RJ, Roberts TA, Haslam N Abstract Exposure to sexual objectification is an everyday experience for many women, yet little is known about its emotional consequences. Fredrickson and Roberts' (1997) objectification theory proposed a within-person process, wherein exposure to sexual objectification causes women to adopt a third-person perspective on their bodies, labeled self-objectification, which has harmful downstream consequences for their emotional well-being. However, previous studies have only tested this model at the between-person level, making them unreliable sources of inference about the proposed intraindividual psychological consequences of objectification. Here, we report the results of Bayesian multilevel structural equation models that simultaneously tested Fredrickson and Roberts' (1997) predictions both within and between persons, using data from 3 ecological momentary assessment (EMA) studies of women's (N = 268) experiences of sexual objectification in daily life. Our findings support the predicted within-person indirect effect of exposure to sexual objectification on increases in negative and self-conscious emotions via self-objectification. However, la...
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: J Pers Soc Psychol Source Type: research