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Female participants were randomly assigned to two experimental conditions: trying on a one-piece swimsuit or a V-neck jumper, male participants either wore a swim trunk or a crew neck jumper. In all cases, they did so alone in a dressing rom where they were asked to look at themselves in the full-length mirror and afterwards complete all questionnaires mentioned before. Then, they were given sweets and told to eat as much as they wanted and fill out another questionnaire.
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Results show that only in the case of women trying on a swimsuit (i.e. manipulating the state of self-objectification) produced more body shame than trying on a jumper. Self-objectification, again, led to body shame in women. And most interestingly, women performed worse on the math test when wearing a swimsuit than when wearing a jumper (Fredrickson et al., 1998).
In 2004, Hebl, King and Lin replicated the study with 400 undergraduate students (with a focus on gender and ethnicity) and supported the findings that "sellf-objectification serves as a mechanism through which the experience of wearing a swimsuit affected psychological and behavioral outcomes", that women had lower self-esteem and body image than men. However, they added: "All individuals can be vulnerable to the consequences of self-objectification."
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- Fredrickson, B. L., Noll, S. M., Roberts, T.-A., Quinn, D. M. & Twenge, J. M. (1998). That Swimsuit Becomes You: Sex Differences in Self-Objectification, Restrained Eating, and Math Performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), 269-284.
- Hebl, M., King, E. B. & Lin, J. (2004). The Swimsuit Becomes Us All: Ethnicity, Gender and Vulnerability to Self-Objetcification. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30(10), link
- images of Alain Delon and Romy Schneider (La Piscine, 1969) via and via and via
Love this type of postings!
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear! Research can be so creative ;-)
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