For many gender equality is prevented by the sexual objectification of women. Objecitification\u00a0theory implies that a womans appearance is primarily assessed by her sexual body parts, while\u00a0the body as a whole and the face are of lower significance. Consequently perception of women\u00a0as persons would underlie a sexual objectification bias.<\/p>\n
The undeniably delicate debate on sexual objectification was further fueled by Sarah J. Gervais\u00a0and coworkers, who tested for a ‘sexual body part recognition bias’. Being cognitive\u00a0psychologists, the authors tried to elucidate whether the perception of men and women is\u00a0processed globally, as attributed to persons, or locally, as attributed to objects and whether\u00a0women’s sexual body parts are of greater importance in recognition than their entire bodies.<\/p>\n
The reader may understand the two levels of perception by thinking of a photo mosaic: On a\u00a0first glance one sees merely the overlying structure, which is perceived as a whole by global\u00a0processing. A second process of close scrutiny reveals the individual images, since the overlying\u00a0structure is disassembled into detaiils this represents local processing. One individual image in\u00a0isolation however would again be globally processed at first. Local processing is common for\u00a0objects: One can recognize an object although only a part is visible, a task which is thought to\u00a0fail for persons.<\/p>\n
The authors chose to test chests and waists which function as everyday-life indicator in gender\u00a0discrimination and are found to be equally sexualized for men and women. In a first experiment\u00a0Gervais and coworkers presented images of whole bodies, male and female, as original and as a\u00a0version featuring a slight modification at chest or waist. The participants were asked to identify\u00a0the original. A second experiment was identical except for showing only isolated body parts,\u00a0meaning chests or waists, thereby enforcing global processing.<\/p>\n
The authors hypothesized that if perception of women would underlie a sexual body part\u00a0recognition bias their body parts would be recognized equally well when presented in context\u00a0of the whole body, thereby underlying local processing because they are a part of the whole,\u00a0and when presented as isolated body parts which underlie global processing, since they are the\u00a0only content of the image.<\/p>\n
The intriguing result of the study: Women’s sexual body parts are recognized equally well in the\u00a0context of their whole body and in isolation. This is independent of the perceiver’s gender. In\u00a0contrast men’s sexual body parts were recognized better when presented in the context of the\u00a0whole body, again independent of the perceiver’s gender.<\/p>\n
Are men and women really perceived in different ways? If so: Why is this difference\u00a0independent of the perceiver’s gender? Is there a cultural reason for this difference? And if\u00a0cultural reasons would be identified: Should we change our culture? Many questions remain.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Felix Spenkuch<\/p>\n
Read more:<\/p>\n
[1] Sarah J. Gervais, Theresa K. Vescio, Jens F?rster, Anne Maass and Caterina Suitner, European<\/p>\n
Journal of Psychology 2012, 42, 6, p.743-753.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For many gender equality is prevented by the sexual objectification of women. Objecitification\u00a0theory implies that a womans appearance is primarily assessed by her sexual body parts, while\u00a0the body as a whole and the face are of lower significance. Consequently perception of women\u00a0as persons would underlie a sexual objectification bias. The undeniably delicate debate on sexual… Read More »Are women perceived in a different way than men?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1635"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1644,"href":"http:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635\/revisions\/1644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/junq.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}