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That Swimsuit Becomes You Sex Differences in
Self-Objectification, Restrained Eating, and Math
Performance

• Melissa Eells

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• Objectification Theory
• women, more so than men, are portrayed as
  though their bodies were capable of representing
  them.
• Duncan, 1990 Fromme Beam, 1974 Gardner, 1980
  Goffman, 1979 Soley Kurzbard, 1986
  Frederickson Roberts, 1997 Van Zoonen, 1994
  Bartkey, 1990 Henley, 1977
• posits that these objectifying views are
  internalized, and, in anticipation of external
  judgement, women learn to judge themselves. This
  is called
• SELF-OBJECTIFICATION

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• Self-Objectification can be either
• TRAIT
• Personality trait, e.g. how chronically focused
  on appearance are you?
• STATE
• When a specific context causes you to be
  self-conscious, in an evaluative way

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The Problem! Consequences of Self-Objectification

• this vigilant self-monitoring drains mental
  energy and consumes attentional resources from
  important activities
• manifested in diminished mental performance
• Increased shame and anxiety
• Disordered eating

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Experiment 1 HypothesisSelf-Objectification
produces BODY SHAME, which in turn predicts
RESTRAINED EATING
N 72 (all women)

1. Trait self-objectification measured to determine
   individual baseline
2. State self-objectification manipulated by
   randomly assigning participants to experimental
   condition (either swimsuit or sweater)
3. BODY SHAME measured in disguised questionnaire
4. RESTRAINED EATING measured in consumer report
   taste test

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BODY SHAME

• Variables
• Explanatory
• Categorical trait self-objectification and
  experimental condition
• Response
• Quantitative body shame

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RESTRAINED EATING

• Given 2 cookies and asked to evaluate.
• Experimenters wanted to measure how much
  participants ate to determine relationship
  between self-objectification, shame and eating.
• Results - three response categories
• True restraint (ate less than ½ of 1 cookie)
• Symbolic restraint (more than ½, but still less
  than 1)
• No restraint (more than 1)

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Before we can look at the relationship between
s-o, body shame, and eating

• Potential Confounding Variable?
• People who liked the cookie more would eat more?
• To avoid this, researchers needed to show that
  there is no relationship between amount eaten and
  how much they cookie was liked

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• Mean liking of cookie (µ) 7
• I 3 (restraint, symbolic restraint, no
  restraint)
• N 72
• Null Hypothesis
• µr µs µn
• Alternative Hypothesis
• Not all the µ are equal
• P(2, 69) 2.5, p .0895

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P(2, 69) 2.5, p .0895

• Can we reject the Null Hypothesis?
• No!
• So we accept µr µs µn
• Since there is no relationship between µ, we can
  rule out mean liking as a confounding variable
• Conclude that amount consumed is due to other
  factors (body shame)

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Results

• Highest body shame level most often predicted
  (57) symbolic restraint group

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Experiment 2 Hypothesis Self-Objectification
diminishes math performance

• Direct Response to Experiment 1
• Replicate findings
• Extend tests into domain of attention and mental
  performance
• Address bias (of not representing whole
  population) by testing men

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Experiment 2 Hypothesis Self-Objectification
diminishes math performance
N 82 (40 men, 42 women)

• Trait self-objectification measured to determine
  individual baseline
• State self-objectification manipulated by
  randomly assigning participants to experimental
  condition (either swimsuit or sweater)
• Body Shame measured in disguised questionnaire
• NEW test of math performance (GMAT)

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Results

• State Self-Objectification
• Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) used to determine
  validity of relationship between experimental
  condition and self-objectification.
• F(1, 73) 8.15, p lt .01
• Is there a relationship?
• YES!

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Results

• Body Shame
• ANCOVA again (BMI covariate)
• Categorical explanatory variables
• Experimental condition
• Trait self-objectification
• sex
• Significant relationships established between
  each three variables and body shame

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Significant relationships established between the
explanatory variables and body shame

• Self-objectification as explanatory variable
• F(1, 73) 4.50 and p lt .05
• Experimental Condition as explanatory variable
• F(1, 73) 6.58 and p lt .05
• Gender split
• For Men, trait self-objectification was
  explanatory
• F(1, 35) 7.19 and p lt .05
• For Women, most significant relationship found
  between experimental condition and body shame
• F(1, 37) 5.83 and p lt .05

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Math Performance

• To test the hypothesis that self-objectification
  would lead to performance decreases, they
  analyzed math scores using ANCOVA

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Results

• No significant relationship between experimental
  condition and math score emerged for men.
• For relationship between experimental condition
  and math score for women
• F(1, 32) 3.94, p .056
• I 2 What are the 2 groups?
• Sweater or swimsuit
• Do we reject Null Hyp. and conclude that there is
  a relationship?
• YES!
• Women in the swimsuit condition performed
  significantly worse on the math test than women
  in the sweater.

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• The men in Experiment 2 served as a comparison
  group to help establish that consequences of
  self-objectification are not part of human nature
  more generally but rather are specific to women

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Consequences of Type I Error

• For relationship between experimental condition
  and math score for women
• F(1, 32) 3.94, p .056
• We rejected the Null Hypothesis and concluded
  that there is a relationship
• BUT if there is no relationship
• Incorrect research conclusion, misleading

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Consequences of Type II Error

• Cookie liking test
• P(2, 69) 2.5, p .0895
• Did not reject Null Hypothesis
• Concluded there was no relationship between
  amount of cookie eaten and how much they liked
  the cookie
• If Type II Error had occurred, and the
  researchers failed to reject the Null Hypothesis
  even thought it was false, then
• Cookie liking would have been a confounding
  variable
• Possible incorrect conclusions to entire study!
• Amount eaten would not have been due to body
  shame, but to how much they liked the cookie!

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BIAS?

• Participants were undergraduates at the
  University of Michigan and Duke University
• Non-representative of the larger population?