Tomi-Ann Roberts

Colorado College · Psychology

Objectification theory (B. L. Fredrickson & T. Roberts, 1997) posits that American culture socializes women to adopt observers' perspectives on their physical selves. This self-objectification is hypothesized to (a) produce body shame, which in turn leads to restrained eating, and (b) consume attentional resources, which is manifested in diminished...

Research shows that individuals feel and later perform better when given positive feedback in the context of an upright posture, as opposed to a slumped one, even if unaware that their bodily position is meant to express emotion. We sought to determine whether proprioceptive feedback from body postures operate differently for women and men. Partici...

Across cultures and historical time, menstruation has tended to be perceived as mysterious, dangerous and potentially contaminating. Most world religions place prohibitions on and prescribe codified purity rituals for menstruating women. We surveyed 340 religious and non-religious women from the Rocky Mountain West region of the United States regar...

This article offers objectification theory as a framework for understanding the experiential consequences of being female in a culture that sexually objectifies the female body. Objectification theory posits that girls and women are typically acculturated to internalize an observer's perspective as a primary view of their physical selves. This pers...

An experiment tested the hypothesis that reminders of a woman's menstrual status lead to more negative reactions to her and increased objectification of women in general. Participants interacted with a female confederate who ostensibly accidentally dropped either a tampon or hair clip out of her handbag. Dropping the tampon led to lower evaluations...

Social media use is pervasive among youth and is associated with body image disturbance and self-objectification. The present study investigated whether a 3-day social media fast in a sample for whom social media is especially salient, female adolescent dancers, can mitigate such negative effects. Through an online survey, 65 pre-teen and teen girl...

Self‐objectification, the internalization of an observer’s appearance‐based perspective of one’s body, has been theorized and demonstrated to reduce body awareness among women. In this field study, we propose self‐objectification as the mechanism to explain the oft‐observed phenomenon where women wearing little clothing appear unbothered by cold we...

Body shame is a common experience among women yet a challenging phenomenon to operationalize, and measures of body shame often fail to capture its embodied aspects. In this article, we examined the structural and psychometric properties of an existing measure of body shame that was developed by Fredrickson et al. (1998) to assess the motivational a...

Objectification Theory posits that everyday encounters with sexual objectification carry a diffuse nonspecific sense of threat that engenders personal safety anxiety in women. In this article, we provide direct evidence for this tenet across 5 studies and 1,665 participants using multiple methods. Study 1 (N = 207) and Study 2 (N = 161) explored an...

This open access handbook, the first of its kind, provides a comprehensive and carefully curated multidisciplinary genre-spanning view of the state of the field of Critical Menstruation Studies, opening up new directions in research and advocacy. It is animated by the central question: ‘“what new lines of inquiry are possible when we center our att...

The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation, Second Edition, addresses key advances made in the field since the previous edition, offering the latest insights from the top theorists and researchers of human motivation. The volume includes chapters on social learning theory, control theory, self-determination theory, terror management theory, and regula...

Exposure to sexual objectification is an everyday experience for many women, yet little is known about its emotional consequences. Fredrickson and Roberts' (1997) objectification theory proposed a within-person process, wherein exposure to sexual objectification causes women to adopt a third-person perspective on their bodies, labeled which has har...

Journalists, child advocacy organizations, parents and psychologists have argued that the sexualization of girls is a broad and increasing problem and is harmful to girls.The APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls was formed in response to these expressions of public concern.

Achieving and maintaining happiness can be difficult, especially when people are not engaging in the activities they know facilitate it. ‘Flow’ activities require clear rules, challenge, a high investment of energy, and have been shown to promote long-term happiness better than low investment, passive activities. Do people know this? In two studies...

This timely and thought-provoking collection explores the ways in which psychological science interacts with and addresses gender across varied subdisciplines in the field, from a feminist viewpoint. A particular aim of this volume is to move the conversation of gender in psychology beyond a difference-only paradigm. Veteran and emerging feminist s...

According to the facial feedback hypothesis, people’s affective responses can be influenced by their own facial expression (e.g., smiling, pouting), even when their expression did not result from their emotional experiences. For example, Strack, Martin, and Stepper (1988) instructed participants to rate the funniness of cartoons using a pen that th...

In this volume, we bring together a number of prominent and emerging feminist scholars to consider the ways in which psychology addresses gender, especially as it moves beyond a simple consideration of gender differences. Springing from work done by a Society for the Psychology of Women (SPW, APA Division 35) Task Force appointed by Stephanie Shiel...

In this chapter, I describe some of the perils and pleasures of translating scholarly work in the realms of objectification, self-objectification, and sexualization to advocacy. Using examples of my own advocacy work in the media, as well as in collaboration with educational, corporate, and legal entities working for the betterment of girls’ and wo...

This volume sought to highlight not only the ways in which feminist psychological science can move us beyond a simple focus on gender differences, but also the best practices currently in use by feminist scholars. In our conclusion, we consider some important lessons learned from this volume and from a survey of the landscape of feminist psychologi...

Abstract Research suggests that posture exerts powerful affective and cognitive influences, although recent studies have indicated that these embodiment effects are moderated by gender. We examined two sociocultural factors that may contribute to the effects of postural feedback in women: self-objectification and power. Across a 2 � 2 � 2 between-s...

Monstrously Mortal: Women’s Bodies, Existential Threat, and Women’s Health Risks From an existential perspective, and terror management theory in particular, fear of death, and the need to manage that fear, is a central force guiding much of human behavior. We use this as a starting place for our chapter, and explain how this perspective can inform...

In this chapter, we attempt to explore the motivational questions that arise when we view the psychology of women through the lens of objectification theory, which highlights the centrality of appearance concerns, or "body projects," for girls and women today. We examine theoretical perspectives on what motivates the sexual objectification of women...

In the short story The Birthmark (1843/1946), Nathaniel Hawthorne’s character Georgiana has a crimson birthmark on her left cheek that resembles a “bloody hand.” This one “visible mark of earthly imperfection” provides the impetus for anxiety that haunts Georgiana’s husband and Georgiana herself. Indeed, it ultimately drives him, encouraged by Geo...

This study examined the influence of male sexual orientation on the objectification of self and others. Objectification is a process by which a perceiver adopts a purely externalized view of either the self or another, a process by which a person’s body becomes the main representation of that person’s identity. A sample of 29 heterosexual and 30 ga...

Although the primate insular cortex has been studied extensively, a comprehensive investigation of its neuronal morphology has yet to be completed. To that end, neurons from 20 human subjects (10 males and 10 females; N = 600) were selected from the secondary gyrus brevis, precentral gyrus, and postcentral gyrus of the left insula. The secondary gy...

In a culture obsessed with women's attractiveness and beauty, media messages abound telling us our corporeal bodies are unacceptable as they are. Women's bodies need sanitizing, deodorizing, exfoliating, and denuding. Perhaps more than any other bodily function, menstruation must be kept “under wraps” in a sexually objectifying culture. In this art...

This 2004 book showcases research and theory about the way in which the social environment shapes, and is shaped by, emotion. The book has three sections, each of which addresses a different level of sociality: interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup. The first section refers to the links between specific individuals, the second to categories tha...

Objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) holds that American culture coaxes women to develop observers' views of their bodies. The present study was designed to test whether a state of self-objectification can be automatically activated by subtle exposure to objectifying words. A state of self-objectification or of bodily empowerment wa...

Strong cultural messages are sent to women that their bodies are unacceptable as they are, thus encouraging engagement in a variety of body-altering practices. It seems that one of the obligations that women have in a culture that sexually objectifies their bodies is to conceal their bodies' more physical functions, such as menstruation. A new scal...

Reports an error in "That swimsuit becomes you: Sex differences in self-objectification, restrained eating, and math performance" by Barbara L. Fredrickson, Tomi-Ann Roberts, Stephanie M. Noll, Diane M. Quinn and Jean M. Twenge (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1998[Jul], Vol 75[1], 269-284). This article contains errors in the Partici...

The perception of physical symptoms and sensations can be based on both internal physiological cues as well as external situational factors. Research on the accuracy with which people can detect physiological indices, as well as on self-reports of symptoms, emotions, and physical exertion suggests that women and men use internal and external cues d...

An experiment tested three possible explanations for gender differences in responsiveness to others' evaluations in achievement settings. Results replicated previous studies and showed that women and men perceived the valence of evaluative messages similarly. Further, women's privately made self-evaluations reflected the valence of others' evaluati...

Using both traditional scientific and feminist methodologies, this study evaluates the effectiveness of a family life education program designed to help dual-earner couples share domestic labor. Both quantitative and qualitative data suggested that the program produced small increases in husbands' involvement in both housework and child care and la...

The perception of internal cues associated with emotion, hunger, and other bodily states is dependent on both internal physiological and external situational cues. Several studies demonstrate that when situational cues are experimentally controlled, males are consistently more accurate than females at detecting variable physiological signals such a...

Interventions to help dual-earner couples share domestic labor are rare. Related interventions to increase fathers' temporal involvement in child care have met with limited success. This article critiques the few scholarly reports of these interventions. In addition, a model of forces both constraining and driving equitable participation in domesti...

This article reviews evidence for a gender difference in responsiveness to others' evaluations in achievement situations. Studies show that women's self-evaluations are more responsive to the valence of the evaluative feedback they receive than are men's. A number of possible explanations for this effect are then discussed, with the best evidence p...

Two studies tested the influence of various types of verbal evaluative feedback men's and women's self-evaluations of their performance in achievenment situations. We tested a theory that women perceive evaluative feedback, particularly negative feedback, to be more informative about their abilities than do men. Because of this, women's self-assess...

Throughout the history of the sexes, women have been perceived as inferior to men, but also have been elevated to the status of goddesses on earth. We suggest that these paradoxical biases often associated with women can be linked to an existential need to distance humanity from the natural world. The sources of discrimination against women are mos...