Sexy Objects
Just to throw something at you guys. Psychology Today has an article, Sexy Women are Seen as Objects, Studies Find, about the neurological effects of objectification. Seems relevant to my interests given the recent sexual portrayal discussion me_llamo_nic had (and previous discussions on objectification).
From the article:
"A study by Princeton psychologists hooked up men to an fMRI machine. After being hooked up, these men were shown pictures of both men and women. Some were scantily clothed; some were not.
The results showed that images of people activated the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which is highly involved in social cognition (e.g., recognizing human faces, when separating one person from another).
The exception was when men high in sexism viewed pictures of sexually dressed women. These pictures did not activate the mPFC for sexist males. This suggests that these men's brains did not perceive these women as fully human."
Kinda a "duh" finding, but it's nice to have it verified. WITH SCIENCE!
Interesting things to note:
- This response was only found in "sexist" males. I'd love to get a hold of the original study to see how they determined which men were sexist (I'm guessing an attitudes survey).
- Is there a similar effect on women with regards to sexually dressed men? There's no mention of this in the article, but it would be interesting to find out considering the female gaze of BtVS. It does mention an earlier study that kinda suggests something along these lines: "And lastly, research shows that men and women view sexualized images (of both men and women) as lacking "mind," which is basically a denial of thoughts and emotions. In this work, people even had less concern for the sexualized people's pain, compared to when they were fully dressed."
From the article:
"A study by Princeton psychologists hooked up men to an fMRI machine. After being hooked up, these men were shown pictures of both men and women. Some were scantily clothed; some were not.
The results showed that images of people activated the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which is highly involved in social cognition (e.g., recognizing human faces, when separating one person from another).
The exception was when men high in sexism viewed pictures of sexually dressed women. These pictures did not activate the mPFC for sexist males. This suggests that these men's brains did not perceive these women as fully human."
Kinda a "duh" finding, but it's nice to have it verified. WITH SCIENCE!
Interesting things to note:
- This response was only found in "sexist" males. I'd love to get a hold of the original study to see how they determined which men were sexist (I'm guessing an attitudes survey).
- Is there a similar effect on women with regards to sexually dressed men? There's no mention of this in the article, but it would be interesting to find out considering the female gaze of BtVS. It does mention an earlier study that kinda suggests something along these lines: "And lastly, research shows that men and women view sexualized images (of both men and women) as lacking "mind," which is basically a denial of thoughts and emotions. In this work, people even had less concern for the sexualized people's pain, compared to when they were fully dressed."