Abstract
A controversial hypothesis, named the Sexualized Body Inversion Hypothesis (SBIH), claims similar visual processing of sexually objectified women (i.e., with a focus on the sexual body parts) and inanimate objects as indicated by an absence of the inversion effect for both type of stimuli. The current study aims at shedding light into the mechanisms behind the SBIH in a series of 4 experiments. Using a modified version of Bernard et al.´s (2012) visual-matching task, first we tested the core assumption of the SBIH, namely that a similar processing style occurs for sexualized human bodies and objects. In Experiments 1 and 2 a non-sexualized (personalized) condition plus two object-control conditions (mannequins, and houses) were included in the experimental design. Results showed an inversion effect for images of personalized women and mannequins, but not for sexualized women and houses. Second, we explored whether this effect was driven by differences in stimulus asymmetry, by testing the mediating and moderating role of this visual feature. In Experiment 3, we provided the first evidence that not only the sexual attributes of the images but also additional perceptual features of the stimuli, such as their asymmetry, played a moderating role in shaping the inversion effect. Lastly, we investigated the strategy adopted in the visual-matching task by tracking eye movements of the participants. Results of Experiment 4 suggest an association between a specific pattern of visual exploration of the images and the presence of the inversion effect. Findings are discussed with respect to the literature on sexual objectification.
Highlights
The idea that women and men can be treated like objects, as a function of their sexual attributes, has increasingly attracted attention of the public at large[1], especially because of the important implications at a societal level [2, 3]
The authors interpreted this pattern of results in the context of the sexual body part recognition bias hypothesis, on the basis of which different cognitive processing styles would be adopted for women vs. men: namely a local, part-based vs. global visual processing, respectively associated with object and human body recognition [10]
The seminal work of Bernard and colleagues [11,12,13] measured the size of the inversion effect, in order to ascertain the processing style associated with the perception of sexualized targets
Summary
The idea that women and men can be treated like objects, as a function of their sexual attributes, has increasingly attracted attention of the public at large[1], especially because of the important implications at a societal level [2, 3]. Gervais and colleagues [9], showed part-to-whole effects with only womens sexual body parts being recognized well regardless of whether they were presented in the context of the entire body or in isolation, while men’s sexual body parts were recognized better when they were presented in the context of the entire body rather than in isolation The authors interpreted this pattern of results in the context of the sexual body part recognition bias hypothesis, on the basis of which different cognitive processing styles would be adopted for women vs men: namely a local, part-based (or analytical) vs global (holistic or configural) visual processing, respectively associated with object and human body recognition [10]. Bernard and colleagues put forward that sexualized women but not men were processed in an object-like fashion, which is the core claim of the so-called sexualized-body inversion hypothesis (SBIH)
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