Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.
PLoS One. 2020 Feb 19;15(2):e0229161. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0229161. eCollection 2020.
Objectification occurs when a person is perceived and/or treated like an object. With the present work, we overview the available measures of objectification and present a series of studies aimed at investigating the validity of the task of inverted body recognition proposed by Bernard and colleagues (2012), which might potentially be a useful cognitive measure of objectification. We conducted three studies. Study 1 (N = 101) is a direct replication of Bernard et al.'s study: participants were presented with the same photos of sexualized male and female targets used in the original research. Study 2a (N = 100) is a conceptual replication: we used different images of scantily dressed male and female models. Finally, in Study 2b (N = 100), we investigated a boundary condition by presenting to participants photos of the same models as in Study 2a, but fully dressed and non-sexualized. Using mixed-effects models for completely-crossed classified data structures, we investigated the relationship between the inversion effect and the stimulus' asymmetry, sexualization and attractiveness, and the perceivers' self-objectification, sexism, and automatic woman-human association. Study 1 replicated the original results, showing a stronger inversion effect for male photos. However, no difference between male and female stimuli emerged in either Study 2a or 2b. Moreover, the impact of the other variables on the inversion effect was highly unstable across the studies. These aspects together indicate that the inversion effect depends on the specific set of stimuli and limits the generalizability of results collected using this method.
当一个人被视为或被对待为一个物体时，就会发生客体化。在本研究中，我们概述了现有的客体化测量方法，并提出了一系列旨在研究 Bernard 及其同事（2012 年）提出的倒置身体识别任务有效性的研究，该任务可能是客体化的一种有用的认知测量方法。我们进行了三项研究。研究 1（N = 101）是 Bernard 等人研究的直接复制：参与者被呈现了与原始研究中相同的性化男性和女性目标的照片。研究 2a（N = 100）是概念上的复制：我们使用了穿着较少的不同男性和女性模特的图像。最后，在研究 2b（N = 100）中，我们通过向参与者呈现与研究 2a 相同的模特的照片来研究一个边界条件，但这些模特穿着整齐且没有性化。我们使用完全交叉分类数据结构的混合效应模型，研究了反转效应与刺激的不对称性、性化和吸引力之间的关系，以及观察者的自我客体化、性别歧视和自动将女性视为人类的倾向之间的关系。研究 1 复制了原始结果，表明男性照片的反转效应更强。然而，在研究 2a 或 2b 中，男性和女性刺激之间都没有出现差异。此外，其他变量对反转效应的影响在整个研究中非常不稳定。这些方面表明，反转效应取决于特定的刺激集，限制了使用这种方法收集的结果的普遍性。
