Xiao Lijuan, Li Baolin, Zheng Lijun, Wang Fang
Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
Front Psychol. 2019 Jan 25;10:57. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00057. eCollection 2019.
Sexual objectification is very common in modern Western societies, especially toward women. Previous research has suggested that in Western cultures, social power could lead to objectification. Specifically, power activates an approaching tendency toward useful targets, in turn leading to instrumental objectification and sexual objectification of targets. However, previous research has mostly focused on Western cultures, and the neural correlates underlying this phenomenon remain unclear. To examine whether the effects of power can be generalized to Chinese cultural contexts and how power promotes the objectification of sexualized bodies, we conducted two studies using Chinese samples. In Study 1, we replicated the behavioral effects of social power on sexual objectification. Specifically, we found that power increased sexual objectification toward sexualized female rather than male bodies. In Study 2, we examined the absence of an N170 amplitude inversion effect as a possible neural correlate of sexual objectification and replicated the effects of power on sexual objectification through event-related potentials (ERPs). For participants in a high-power group, the N170 amplitude inversion effect emerged when processing sexualized male bodies (less sexual objectification) but not female bodies (more sexual objectification); this effect was not seen for those participants in a low-power group. Our findings provide behavioral and neural data that power leads to increased sexual objectification toward sexualized women in Chinese participants.
性客体化在现代西方社会非常普遍，尤其是针对女性。先前的研究表明，在西方文化中，社会权力可能导致客体化。具体而言，权力会激活对有用目标的趋近倾向，进而导致对目标的工具性客体化和性客体化。然而，先前的研究大多集中在西方文化，这种现象背后的神经关联尚不清楚。为了检验权力的影响是否能推广到中国文化背景，以及权力如何促进对具有性特征身体的客体化，我们使用中国样本进行了两项研究。在研究1中，我们重复了社会权力对性客体化的行为影响。具体而言，我们发现权力增加了对具有性特征的女性而非男性身体的性客体化。在研究2中，我们检验了N170波幅反转效应的缺失作为性客体化可能的神经关联，并通过事件相关电位（ERP）重复了权力对性客体化的影响。对于高权力组的参与者，在处理具有性特征的男性身体（性客体化较少）时出现了N170波幅反转效应，但处理女性身体（性客体化较多）时未出现；低权力组的参与者则未观察到这种效应。我们的研究结果提供了行为和神经数据，表明权力会导致中国参与者对具有性特征的女性的性客体化增加。
