The Relationship Between Social Power and Sexual Objectification: Behavioral and ERP Data

Abstract

Sexual objectification is very common in modern Western societies, especially toward women. Previous research has suggested that in Western cultures, social power could lead to objectification. Specifically, power activates an approaching tendency toward useful targets, in turn leading to instrumental objectification and sexual objectification of targets. However, previous research has mostly focused on Western cultures, and the neural correlates underlying this phenomenon remain unclear. To examine whether the effects of power can be generalized to Chinese cultural contexts and how power promotes the objectification of sexualized bodies, we conducted two studies using Chinese samples. In Study 1, we replicated the behavioral effects of social power on sexual objectification. Specifically, we found that power increased sexual objectification toward sexualized female rather than male bodies. In Study 2, we examined the absence of an N170 amplitude inversion effect as a possible neural correlate of sexual objectification and replicated the effects of power on sexual objectification through event-related potentials (ERPs). For participants in a high-power group, the N170 amplitude inversion effect emerged when processing sexualized male bodies (less sexual objectification) but not female bodies (more sexual objectification); this effect was not seen for those participants in a low-power group. Our findings provide behavioral and neural data that power leads to increased sexual objectification toward sexualized women in Chinese participants.

Full text

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
published: 25 January 2019
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00057
Edited by:
Gesualdo M. Zucco,
University of Padova, Italy
Reviewed by:
Giulia Buodo,
University of Padova, Italy
Carlotta Cogoni,
University of Trento, Italy
*Correspondence:
Fang Wang
fwang@bnu.edu.cn
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Cognitive Science,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 03 May 2018
Accepted: 09 January 2019
Published: 25 January 2019
Citation:
Xiao L, Li B, Zheng L and Wang F
(2019) The Relationship Between
Social Power and Sexual
Objectification: Behavioral and ERP
Data. Front. Psychol. 10:57.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00057
The Relationship Between Social
Power and Sexual Objectification:
Behavioral and ERP Data
Lijuan Xiao1,2 , Baolin Li3, Lijun Zheng2and Fang Wang1*
1Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology
Education, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China, 2Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality,
Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China, 3School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking
University, Beijing, China
Sexual objectification is very common in modern Western societies, especially toward
women. Previous research has suggested that in Western cultures, social power could
lead to objectification. Specifically, power activates an approaching tendency toward
useful targets, in turn leading to instrumental objectification and sexual objectification
of targets. However, previous research has mostly focused on Western cultures, and
the neural correlates underlying this phenomenon remain unclear. To examine whether
the effects of power can be generalized to Chinese cultural contexts and how power
promotes the objectification of sexualized bodies, we conducted two studies using
Chinese samples. In Study 1, we replicated the behavioral effects of social power on
sexual objectification. Specifically, we found that power increased sexual objectification
toward sexualized female rather than male bodies. In Study 2, we examined the
absence of an N170 amplitude inversion effect as a possible neural correlate of sexual
objectification and replicated the effects of power on sexual objectification through
event-related potentials (ERPs). For participants in a high-power group, the N170
amplitude inversion effect emerged when processing sexualized male bodies (less
sexual objectification) but not female bodies (more sexual objectification); this effect was
not seen for those participants in a low-power group. Our findings provide behavioral
and neural data that power leads to increased sexual objectification toward sexualized
women in Chinese participants.
Keywords: power, sexual objectification, analytical processing, configural processing, inversion effect
INTRODUCTION
There is currently a trend in Western culture for women to be depicted in an objectified manner
in both social interactions and mass media presentations. For example, women report being gazed
at by others more than men do during social interactions, and women in visual media are usually
depicted with an emphasis on the body and body parts, while men are portrayed with an emphasis
on the head and face (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997). These findings suggest the existence of sexual
objectification. Fredrickson and Roberts (1997) proposed that in Western cultures, women in social
interactions often encounter sexual objectification, in which a woman’s body or body parts are
separated from her and reduced to mere instruments or regarded as if they represent the entire
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Xiao et al. Social Power and Sexual Objectification
person. Specifically, sexual objectification is a form of appearance
focus directed toward a woman’s sexual body or body parts.
Sexual objectification is a common occurrence in daily life,
arising in various forms of media and interpersonal encounters. It
can present as indirect body monitoring or in direct forms, such
as rape and sexual harassment (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997).
Once sexually objectified, women gradually internalize an
objectifying observer’s perspective on their own bodies, becoming
preoccupied with their own physical appearance, which is
called self-objectification (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997). Self-
objectification can in turn lead to physical, mental, and social
consequences (Loughnan and Vaes, 2017), such as body shame,
social physique anxiety (Calogero, 2004), reduced cognitive
performance (Quinn et al., 2006;Gay and Castano, 2010),
and eating disorders and depression (Peat and Muehlenkamp,
2011). In the eyes of objectifiers, objectified women have less
warmth, competence, and humanity than their non-objectified
counterparts (Heflick and Goldenberg, 2009;Loughnan et al.,
2010;Heflick et al., 2011;Vaes et al., 2011). Additionally, the
objectified share this view and see themselves in the manner
in which they are seen by their objectifiers: as lacking warmth,
competence, morality, and humanity (Loughnan et al., 2017).
Due to its widespread and salient harmful effects, especially on
women, sexual objectification has attracted increasing attention
in recent years.
From the theoretical framework of sexual objectification,
research on cognitive objectification (Bernard et al., 2018b) has
suggested that sexualized women (as opposed to sexualized men)
are cognitively perceived in the manner of objects, that is, through
analytical processing (e.g., Bernard et al., 2012, 2017, 2018b;
Gervais et al., 2012). Specifically, Bernard et al. (2012) proposed
the sexualized-body inversion hypothesis (SBIH), which suggests
that sexual objectification would reduce or eliminate the
inversion effect for sexualized women but not for sexualized men.
The inversion effect is defined as inverted stimuli being more
difficult to recognize than upright ones (Yin, 1969). Scholars
doubted the validity of the sexualized-body inversion effect
observed by Bernard et al. (2012) and suggested that the physical
features of the stimulus matter (e.g., there is more asymmetry
in female targets than male targets) (Tarr, 2013;Schmidt and
Kistemaker, 2015). However, later research replicated the effects
with the same or similar targets used in Bernard et al. (2012)
(e.g., Kostic, 2013;Bernard et al., 2015;Civile and Obhi, 2016;
Civile et al., 2016), and suggested that the sexualized-body
inversion effect cannot be explained by the physical features of
the stimulus per se, as the sexual connotation of the target’s
posture plays a crucial role in cognitive objectification (Bernard
et al., 2018c). Evidence from behavioral data suggested that
female sexual body parts could be better recognized in isolation,
whereas male sexual body parts are better recognized within the
context of the entire body (Gervais et al., 2012). Bernard et al.
(2015) also found that the occurrence of sexual objectification
results from a focus on the sexual body parts of women. More
recently, ERP evidence of cognitive objectification was provided
by Bernard et al. (2017, 2018a,c). It was found that there is
an N170 amplitude inversion effect for inverted (vs. upright)
men’s bodies but not for women’s bodies, regardless of the extent
of target sexualization (non-sexualized vs. sexualized). N170 is
a negative peak approximately 170 ms after stimulus onset at
occipitotemporal regions (Thierry et al., 2006), and the N170
component is accepted as a face-selective component (Itier and
Taylor, 2004) that might reflect configural information during
facial processing (Rossion et al., 2000;Goffaux et al., 2003).
These findings suggested that women’s bodies are more likely
to be perceived with a localized focus, especially the sexual
regions, rather than as entire bodies. That is, sexualized women
are processed more analytically (i.e., as sexual objects rather
than as people) compared to sexualized men. Indeed, research
has suggested that face/body perception is mainly based on
configural processing (Reed et al., 2006), while object perception
is based on analytical processing (Tanaka and Farah, 1993).
Specifically, configural processing is related to the processing
of the relationships between the features of a stimulus (Maurer
et al., 2002), while analytical processing primarily depends on
the processing of each feature individually (Diamond and Carey,
1986;Leder and Bruce, 2000). The inversion effect for faces has
been suggested to be an indicator of configural processing (Yin,
1969), and inverted human stimuli are more difficult to recognize
than inverted objects (Reed et al., 2003, 2006). The inversion
of faces and bodies but not of objects disrupts recognition
performance, suggesting that configural processing is mainly
involved in face/body perception rather than object perception
(Civile and Obhi, 2016).
In addition, there are many relevant social factors that can
promote the objectification process, such as social power. As
a common phenomenon, power plays an important role in
daily social life that can be defined as an individual’s capacity
to control resources and influence others, including the ability
to administer rewards and punishments (Galinsky et al., 2003;
Keltner et al., 2003). Possessing power is accompanied by
various cognitive outcomes, such as increased independent self-
construals (Lee and Tiedens, 2001), increased action orientation
(Galinsky et al., 2003), greater approach behaviors (Keltner
et al., 2003), and increased association with instrumentality
when approaching social targets (Gruenfeld et al., 2008). Guinote
(2017) concluded that power affects people in terms of activating,
wanting and goal seeking. The power-approach theory suggests
that higher levels of power are associated with increased rewards
and freedom, which, in turn, activate power holders’ approach
tendencies and lead them to focus on rewards rather than
on punishments (Anderson and Berdahl, 2002). Furthermore,
power facilitates individuals’ movements toward targets that
satisfy their personal goals (Keltner et al., 2003). Gruenfeld et al.
(2008) demonstrated that power is associated with instrumental
perception. In addition, possessing power activates goal-directed
behaviors. For those with high levels of power, when compared
to powerless people, the approaching of a social target is driven
more by the target’s usefulness (defined in terms of the perceiver’s
goals). This difference suggests that power promotes individuals
to process social targets more as instruments than as people with
personalities. That is, people with power approach objects based
on their usefulness (goal-relevant objects).
Since the approach tendency activated by power decreases
the perception of humanity and sexual objectification is a
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form of dehumanization (Heflick and Goldenberg, 2009), social
power should promote sexual objectification. Indeed, Civile and
Obhi (2016) studied Caucasian participants and suggested that
power increased participants’ sexual objectification of sexualized
members of the opposite gender but not those of the same
gender, whereas the powerless did not show sexual objectification
of either sexualized men or women. In addition, the authors
found that this sexual objectification toward the opposite gender
seen with Caucasian power holders occurred only when the
targets were Caucasian but not Asian. They attributed these
diverging results to the widespread media sexualization of
Caucasian women but not Asian women, who are portrayed
as housewives (Civile et al., 2016). These works conducted
preliminary explorations of the associations between power and
sexual objectification. However, it is unclear whether the effect
of power on sexual objectification can be generalized to Eastern
cultures, for example, Chinese culture. On the one hand, there
are mixed findings about whether there is objectification in
Eastern cultures. Some researchers argued that there is less
objectification in Eastern cultures compared to Western cultures
(e.g., Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997;Loughnan et al., 2015).
Others found that participants from both Western (e.g., Belgium)
and Eastern (e.g., Thailand) cultures regarded sexualized targets
as having less competence and less agency than non-sexualized
targets and administered more pain to sexualized targets (Wollast
et al., 2018). This suggested that sexual objectification does exist
in Asian cultures, although perhaps to a lesser degree than that
of Western cultures. On the other hand, previous research did
not take the particular social contexts (i.e., the postreform era)
of China into consideration. There is no doubt that the 40-year
opening-up and economic reform in China have witnessed a great
improvement in the status of Chinese women. However, gender
segregation and disparity are still present, if not increased, in the
labor market (Ji et al., 2017). In the family sphere, it has been
reported that there was a resurgence of Confucian patriarchal
traditions (Ji, 2015). Pressures from the public labor market and
the private family spheres encourage Chinese women to suffer
more in both home and work than their Western counterparts,
let alone in social power. Thus, it is of great significance to
explore the effects of power on objectification under Chinese
cultural contexts. Furthermore, the majority of previous studies
have focused on behavioral outcomes, while the neural correlates
underlying power effects on sexual objectification remain an open
question.
THE PRESENT STUDY
The present study was designed to establish whether the effects
of social power on sexual objectification could be replicated in
Chinese culture and to explore the underlying neural correlates.
In Study 1, we conducted a behavioral study to replicate the
effects of social power on sexual objectification in a Chinese
sample. Given the high occurrence of sexual objectification and
the prevalence of sexualized media all around the world, we
hypothesized that sexual objectification exists in China as well
and that power holders would process sexualized women more
analytically, with more sexual objectification, than they would
men.
Study 2 explored the possible neural correlates of the effects
found in Study 1. We consider the N170 amplitude inversion
effect to be a neural representation of configural body processing.
Rossion et al. (2000) showed that inverted versus upright
targets delayed and increased N170 when participants were
recognizing faces, but this effect was not seen for inverted objects.
Additionally, Stekelenburg and de Gelder (2004) suggested
that larger N170 amplitudes and longer latencies occur for
inverted rather than upright human bodies, which supports
the configural processing of human body shapes. That is,
human bodies might be processed configurally in the same
manner as faces but not as objects. Minnebusch et al. (2009)
also suggested that the N170 elicited by bodies is similar
to the N170 elicited by faces. These studies demonstrated
that the N170 component can be considered to be a robust
indicator of configural body processing. Recently, researchers
adopted the N170 amplitude inversion effect (i.e., larger
N170 amplitudes for inverted vs. upright stimuli) to access
cognitive objectification, with no N170 inversion effect indicating
less configural processing and more cognitive objectification
(Bernard et al., 2017, 2018a,c). That is, when presented with
an inverted (vs. upright) stimulus, increased neural activity
and cognitive resources are needed to detect the stimulus
category, indicating greater configural processing (vs. analytical
processing).
Similar to N170, P100 can also be affected by stimulus
presentation (e.g., upright vs. inverted). Specifically, the P100
has a longer latency and larger amplitude in response to
inverted than to upright faces (Itier and Taylor, 2004). However,
body inversion does not affect P100 latency or amplitude
significantly (Righart and de Gelder, 2007). Due to the functional
dissociation between P100 and N170, researchers often use
P100 as a baseline condition to examine the changes in N170
component (e.g., Minnebusch et al., 2009;Bauser and Suchan,
2013). We also included a P100 component in the present
study and hypothesized that there would be an N170 amplitude
inversion effect for power holders during the processing of
sexualized men but not women. In addition, the pattern
of P100 amplitude would not be same as that of N170;
specifically, the amplitude inversion effect when processing
both sexualized female and male stimuli would not occur on
P100.
STUDY 1
In Study 1, we intended to replicate the behavioral effects
of power on sexual objectification. We hypothesized that
participants in the high-power group would be more likely to
process sexualized bodies analytically and there would be more
objectification. Participants in the low-power and control groups
would be more likely to process sexualized bodies configurally,
that is, with less objectification. In addition, we predicted that
there would be more sexual objectification of sexualized women
than men.
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Methods
Participants
A total of 100 (57 women) undergraduate students participated in
the study. They were recruited via an Internet advertisement on
the BBS campus. All participants were Chinese and heterosexual
by self-report on one question, “What is your sexual orientation?”
The response choices were heterosexual or non-heterosexual
(gay, lesbian, bisexual or other). All participants had normal or
corrected to normal vision, and none had neurological disorders.
Participants were randomly assigned to a high-power, low-power,
or control group. There were 34 participants in the high-power
group (19 women; Mage = 21.79 years, SD = 1.77), 36 in the low-
power group (18 women; Mage = 21.42 years, SD = 1.81), and 30
in the control group (20 women; Mage = 21.17 years, SD = 1.72).
We choose this sample according to the power manipulation of
previous research (Galinsky et al., 2003;Hogeveen et al., 2013).
Written informed consent was provided after procedural details
had been explained. All procedures conformed to institutional
ethical guidelines for research and were approved by the local
ethics committee.
Procedures
Power manipulation
We manipulated social power by asking participants to recall a
personal power episode. Participants were instructed to recall and
write down a particular incident in their lives, including what had
occurred and how they had felt in as much detail as possible,
wherein they had possessed power over another individual or
individuals (high-power group) or someone else had possessed
power over them (low-power group; Galinsky et al., 2003), or to
describe what had occurred to them on the previous day (control
group; Hogeveen et al., 2013). The power recall task is very
common and has been examined by previous researchers (e.g.,
Galinsky et al., 2003;Hogeveen et al., 2013;Civile and Obhi, 2016;
Civile et al., 2016). We included a control group to examine the
sexualized-body inversion effect reported in Bernard et al. (2012)
and the power effects on objectification (Gruenfeld et al., 2008).
All participants had 10 min to recall and write down the incident
on a sheet of A4 paper with 21 lines.
Sexual objectification
After finishing the power-manipulation task, participants were
instructed to complete an ostensibly unrelated image recognition
task. This task, which was adopted from Bernard et al. (2012),
was designed to measure sexual objectification. Participants were
randomly presented with 48 images of sexualized males and
females, who were in swimsuits or underwear, standing still,
staring at the camera, and showing natural expressions. The
stimuli images were also adopted from Bernard et al. (2012).
There were 24 images of female (12 upright and 12 inverted)
and 24 of male (12 upright and 12 inverted). To avoid the
possible orientation tendency bias resulting from the stimulus
images, we presented all images twice (one was the original, and
the other was its left-right mirror image). As such, there were
96 trials in all (48 upright and 48 inverted). The experimental
task was as follows: first, an image was presented for 250 ms,
followed by a 1,000 ms blank screen. Next, participants were
shown two images—the old image (presented previously) and its
mirrored form—and were asked to identify which one was the
image they had previously seen (the old image). They pressed
the “F” key if the left one was the old image and the “J” key
if the right one was the old image. There would be a new trial
only after participants responded to the current images. We
counterbalanced the positions (left vs. right) of the old images
across trials. The image stimuli were presented in the center
of a computer monitor using E-Prime 2.0 (Psychology Software
Tools, United States). Participants’ recognition accuracy rates and
reaction times were recorded. Subsequently, all participants were
debriefed and compensated.
To avoid the potential effects of the familiarity and
attractiveness of images, a pilot test with 17 participants (10
women; Mage = 22.88 years, SD = 1.80) was conducted.
Participants were asked to rate the stimulus images in terms of
familiarity (from 1 [not familiar with it at all] to 7 [very familiar
with it]) and physical attractiveness (from 1 [not at all] to 7
[very]). For familiarity, the results suggested that there was no
difference between male (M= 2.13, SD = 1.11) and female bodies
[M= 2.23, SD = 1.05, t(16) = 0.78, p= 0.45, Cohen’s d= 0.10],
indicating that participants were unfamiliar with both. For
physical attractiveness, a 2 (stimulus gender: male, female) ×2
(participant gender: man, woman) repeated-measures analysis
was conducted using SPSS version 16 (same as below). The
main effect of stimulus gender was significant [F(1,15) = 7.61,
p<0.05, η2
p= 0.34], with female bodies (M= 3.82, SD = 0.94)
being rated as more attractive than male bodies (M= 3.23,
SD = 1.00). However, we did not find an effect of participant
gender nor an interaction effect between stimulus gender and
participant gender (all ps>0.05). That is, participants tended to
rate sexualized female bodies as more attractive than sexualized
male bodies. According to previous research, the attractiveness
of the target does not affect the performance of participants
(Bernard et al., 2012, 2015, 2017;Civile and Obhi, 2016;Civile
et al., 2016).
Results
Manipulation Check
Two independent coders blind to the experimental groups rated
the essays using a seven-point scale (1 = no power at all,7=rich
in power) to determine how much power participants appeared
to have exercised in the situation described (α= 0.74). As
expected, the judges rated participants in the high-power group
as significantly more powerful (M= 4.78, SD = 1.69) than those in
the low-power group [M= 2.17, SD = 1.38, t(68) = 7.06, p<0.001,
Cohen’s d= 1.72] and marginally significant more power than
those in the control group [M= 4.18, SD = 1.02, t(62) = 1.68,
p= 0.10, Cohen’s d= 0.43]. Additionally, participants in the
control group were rated as more powerful than those in the
low-power group [t(64) = 6.62, p<0.001, Cohen’s d= 1.66].
Recognition Performance (d’)
We conducted d’ analysis with participants’ accuracy scores
according to previous research (Stanislaw and Todorov, 1999).
We computed the hit rates and false alarm rates of participants in
each stimulus condition, computed the d’ values for upright male
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bodies, inverted male bodies, upright female bodies and inverted
female bodies, and used the d’ values to conduct the following
analyses.
A 2 ×2×3×2 mixed-model ANOVA was conducted,
with stimulus orientation (upright, inverted) and stimulus gender
(male, female) as within-subject factors, and power group (high,
low, control) and participant gender (man, woman) as between-
subject factors. Neither the four-way interaction nor the three-
way interaction between participant gender, stimulus orientation
and stimulus gender were significant (all ps>0.23). However,
an interaction effect of power group, stimulus orientation and
stimulus gender was found [F(2,94) = 4.05, p= 0.02, η2
p= 0.08].
To dissect this interaction, separate 2 (stimulus orientation:
upright, inverted) ×2 (stimulus gender: male, female) ANOVAs
were conducted for each power group.
High-power group
We found a significant two-way interaction [F(1,33) = 25.90,
p<0.001, η2
p= 0.44]. There was a significant effect of
stimulus orientation [F(1,33) = 38.65, p<0.001, η2
p= 0.54]
as well as stimulus gender [F(1,33) = 36.75, p<0.001,
η2
p= 0.53]. Simple effects analysis showed a significant inversion
effect for sexualized males, whereby upright males (M= 3.14,
SD = 0.75) were recognized better than inverted males [M= 1.95,
SD = 0.95, t(33) = 7.92, p<0.001, 95% CI = [0.89, 1.50],
Cohen’s d= 1.41]; however, for sexualized females, participants’
recognition performance for upright (M= 3.35, SD = 0.67) and
inverted bodies (M= 3.15, SD = 0.55) did not differ significantly
[t(33) = 1.38, p= 0.18, 95% CI = [−0.10, 0.50], Cohen’s
d= 0.33], suggesting that there was no body inversion effect
(i.e., more objectification). We further calculated the Bayes factor
of the null hypothesis (i.e., no significant difference between
upright female bodies and inverted female bodies) against the
alternative hypothesis (i.e., a significant difference between the
two groups) using the Bayesian t-test (Rouder et al., 2009).
The Bayes factor (BF = 2.30) supported the null hypothesis,
suggesting that there was no inversion effect for female bodies.
In other words, power holders processed sexualized males with
less objectification and processed sexualized females with more
objectification (see Figure 1A).
Low-power group
Again, an interaction between stimulus gender and stimulus
orientation was found [F(1,35) = 5.68, p= 0.02, η2
p= 0.14].
Furthermore, the effects of stimulus orientation [F(1,35) = 46.24,
p<0.001, η2
p= 0.57] and stimulus gender [F(1,35) = 26.38,
p<0.001, η2
p= 0.43] were significant. Pairwise comparisons
revealed a significant body inversion effect for sexualized males,
with upright targets (M= 2.70, SD = 0.92) being recognized
better than inverted targets [M= 1.76, SD = 0.79, t(35) = 7.77,
p<0.001, 95% CI = [0.70, 1.19], Cohen’s d= 1.11]. The
same pattern emerged for sexualized female bodies, although
attenuated; participants tended to recognize upright females
(M= 3.09, SD = 1.10) better than inverted women [M= 2.57,
SD = 1.01, t(35) = 3.35, p= 0.002, 95% CI = [0.21, 0.84], Cohen’s
d= 0.50]. In other words, in the low-power group, sexualized
males and females were both processed with less objectification,
as demonstrated by the inversion effect (see Figure 1B).
Control group
There was no significant interaction between stimulus orientation
and stimulus gender [F(1,29) = 0.04, p= 0.84, η2
p= 0.002],
but there were significant main effects of stimulus orientation
[F(1,29) = 16.58, p<0.001, η2
p= 0.36] and stimulus gender
[F(1,29) = 42.99, p<0.001, η2
p= 0.60]. Pairwise comparisons
suggested a significant body inversion effect for male bodies, with
upright males (M= 2.39, SD = 0.85) being recognized better
than inverted ones [M= 1.92, SD = 1.07, t(29) = 2.45, p= 0.02,
95% CI = [0.08, 0.86], Cohen’s d= 0.50]. The same pattern
emerged for female bodies, with participants tending to recognize
upright females (M= 3.13, SD = 0.89) better than inverted females
[M= 2.60, SD = 0.82, t(29) = 2.74, p= 0.01, 95% CI = [0.14, 0.92],
Cohen’s d= 0.63] (see Figure 1C).
Reaction Time
Similarly, a 2 (stimulus orientation: upright, inverted) ×2
(stimulus gender: male, female) ×3 (power group: high, low,
control) ×2 (participant gender: man, woman) mixed-model
ANOVA was performed. A significant four-way interaction
was not found, and none of the three-way interactions were
significant (all ps>0.07). However, we found a significant
interaction between stimulus orientation and stimulus gender
[F(1,94) = 9.49, p= 0.003, η2
p= 0.09]. This finding was due to
participants spending more time attempting to recognize upright
male bodies (M= 1250.35 ms, SD = 557.82) than upright female
bodies [M= 1168.96 ms, SD = 529.33, t(99) = 2.59, p= 0.01, 95%
CI = [18.98, 143.80], Cohen’s d= 0.15]. Furthermore, participants
also spent more time trying to recognize inverted male bodies
(M= 1507.72 ms, SD = 730.92) than inverted female bodies
[M= 1266.93 ms, SD = 568.52, t(99) = 6.99, p<0.001, 95%
CI = [172.42, 309.16], Cohen’s d= 0.37]. These results suggested
that the higher accuracy rate for female targets was not due to
longer reaction times. In other words, we excluded the possibility
of a speed-accuracy tradeoff induced by the experimental design.
Discussion
In Study 1, we found an inversion effect in the high-
power group when recognizing sexualized male bodies but
not female bodies, suggesting that there was less configural
processing for sexualized female and, accordingly, more sexual
objectification. This finding is consistent with previous findings
that suggested that power facilitates objectification (Gruenfeld
et al., 2008) and sexual objectification (Civile and Obhi, 2016;
Civile et al., 2016). Specifically, compared to participants in
the control and low-power groups, participants in the high-
power group were more likely to sexually objectify female
bodies.
Some experts may speculate about the relatively low
attractiveness ratings of the targets. In the present study, we
adopted sexualized images from Bernard et al. (2012). In fact,
the ratings of attractiveness in Bernard et al. (2012)’s work
also appeared to be quite low (seven-point scale for physical
attractiveness; sexualized female, M= 3.70, SD = 0.31; sexualized
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FIGURE 1 | Results of the old/new recognition task in Study 1. (A) Participants’ performance in high-power group. (B) Participants’ performance in low-power
group. (C) Participants’ performance in control group. Error bars indicate SEM.
male, M= 3.04, SD = 0.27). However, recent work by Bernard
et al. (2018c) suggested that it is not revealing clothing per se
that matters for cognitive objectification, but suggestive postures.
Thus, we believe that the ratings of the attractiveness of the targets
were less important in the present study.
There are mixed findings about the effects of participant
gender. Civile and Obhi (2016) found an effect of gender for
both Caucasian man and woman participants who possessed
power when processing opposite gender targets. However, other
researchers reported no moderating effect of participant gender
(Bernard et al., 2012, 2017;Gervais et al., 2012). We did not
find a role of participant gender in the present study, which
is consistent with the latter reports. One possible explanation
is that sexual objectification toward women does not reflect
in-group biases (Bernard et al., 2012, 2015) but is shared
by both men and women, although each group has different
motivations; sexual attraction might be the primary motive of
sexual objectification for men, while women may be motivated
by social comparisons to distance themselves from sexually
objectified females (Vaes et al., 2011). There is an alternative
explanation from the perspective of sociology. It has been
suggested that the separation of public and private spheres have
facilitated inequalities at home and at work for Chinese women
(vs. men). Moreover, research has suggested that even women
themselves subscribe to traditional gender role expectations and
accept the disadvantaged position (Ji et al., 2017). In this case,
the experience of power in daily life may be rare for women.
Thus, the effects of the power recalling task in the laboratory
may be limited for women. In contrast, for the advantaged men
group, rich social power experiences may increase their access
to a sense of power and increased objectification of sexualized
women.
The body inversion effect found in the control group for both
sexualized females and sexualized males seems to be inconsistent
with previous findings (Bernard et al., 2012;Civile and Obhi,
2016). However, it can be explained when the stimuli that were
used and the preferential perceptual style of the Chinese are taken
into consideration. It has been suggested that social contexts
play a critical role in the perceptual process of Asians, while
Westerners’ perceptual style tends to focus on the foreground
objects (Miyamoto et al., 2006). In Chinese sociocultural context,
individuals are regarded as inherently connected to and involved
in social relationships. Furthermore, Chinese focus more on
cooperation, humanity, and perspective taking, which place
many more restraints on individuals’ behavior. In turn, this
may lead to a more configural cognitive processing style among
Chinese. In contrast, in Western cultural contexts, individuals
pursue their own goals without being influenced much by
contexts, which may lead to a more analytic cognitive processing
style (Miyamoto, 2013). In the present study, we adopted
sexualized Caucasian targets, which are plain and 2-dimensional
images, without background contexts. Thus, it is possible that
both the holistic perceptual style of Chinese and the stimuli
per se contributed to the presence of inversion effect for
both sexualized males and sexualized females in the control
group.
STUDY 2
In Study 2, we investigated whether and how temporary shifts
in social power modulate the neural correlates of the processing
of sexualized bodies. We predicted that there would be both
behavioral sexualized-body inversion effects and N170 amplitude
inversion effects in the low-power group for both male and
female stimuli, as well as for male stimuli in high-power
group, while both the behavioral and EEG inversion effects
would disappear in the high-power group for female stimuli. In
addition, we predicted that the P100 amplitude pattern would not
be influenced by either the stimuli gender or the stimuli position.
There are two differences between Study 2 and Study 1. First,
given that the primary focus was on the effects of power on sexual
objectification, we did not include a control group in Study 2.
Second, Asian stimulus images (with their hands placed by their
sides) were adopted in an old-new task (Civile and Obhi, 2016)
in Study 2 to avoid the potential effects of both racial differences
and physical features such as asymmetry during the mirror-image
discrimination task.
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Methods
Participants
A new sample of 36 undergraduate student participants (17
women; Mage = 21.28 years, SD = 1.37) was recruited. All
participants were Chinese and heterosexual by self-report and
had normal or corrected to normal vision, and none had
neurological disorders. Written informed consent was provided
after the procedural details had been explained. All procedures
conformed to institutional ethical guidelines for research and
were approved by the local ethics committee.
Procedures
Power manipulation
Participants were randomly assigned to a high-power (17, 9
women) or low-power (19, 8 women) group, and the power
manipulation procedure was the same as in Study 1.
Sexual objectification
We collected 208 copyright-free images of sexualized females
and males from the Internet. All targets were in a standing
position and had their hands placed by their sides in order to
reduce physical asymmetry, and each of targets was presented
as upright or inverted. Targets were all young and attractive,
predominately Asian (greater than 95%), wearing underwear or
swimsuits, and showing a neutral facial expression. The image
stimuli were presented on a black background in the center of
a computer monitor. We standardized the sizes of images to
373 ×560 pixels and changed all backgrounds to white. The
size of each stimulus was 11.3 ×17.0 cm at a viewing distance
of approximately 80 cm, resulting in a visual angle of 6 ×8◦.
The procedure consisted of two blocks, counterbalanced between
participants. Each block consisted of a study phase and a test
phase. There were 52 trials in the study phase and 104 trials in
the test phase in each block. In the study phase, we presented 104
sexualized images, one at a time, with 26 of each kind of stimulus.
The experimental sequence was as follows: first, a fixation point
was presented for 1,000 ms; then, a stimulus image was presented
in the center of the screen for 3,000 ms. This process was repeated
until all images had been presented. In the test phase, participants
were presented with 208 images, one at a time, wherein half
were old images that had been viewed in the study phase and
the other half were new images. Participants were instructed
to identify as quickly and accurately as possible whether the
stimulus was old (by pressing the Fkey) or new (by pressing the
Jkey).
A pilot test with 18 individuals (all self-reported heterosexual;
10 women; Mage = 23.28 years, SD = 1.71) revealed that
for familiarity, there was no difference between male bodies
(M= 1.73, SD = 0.80) and female bodies [M= 2.16, SD = 1.26,
t(17) = −1.90, p= 0.07, Cohen’s d= 0.42], suggesting that
participants were unfamiliar with both. For attractiveness, an
interaction effect between participant gender and stimulus
gender was found [F(1,16) = 11.23, p= 0.004, η2
p= 0.41].
Pairwise comparisons revealed that male participants rated
female bodies (M= 4.67, SD = 0.81) as more attractive
than male bodies [M= 2.96, SD = 0.92, t(7) = −6.06,
p= 0.001, Cohen’s d= 2.03], while female participants
rated male bodies (M= 3.74, SD = 1.25) and female bodies
(M= 3.26, SD = 1.03) as the same level of attractiveness
[t(9) = −2.04, p= 0.07, Cohen’s d= 0.43]. These results
accompanied with further analysis suggested that the familiarity
and attractiveness of targets did not affect the performance of
participants.
During ERP recordings, participants were asked to refrain
from moving as much as possible. To retain the effect of power,
participants were instructed to remember the previously recalled
power experience between the two blocks for 2 min by asking
themselves, “What was it? How did it happen? How did you feel?”
Subsequently, all participants were debriefed and compensated.
Electrophysiological recordings and analysis
While participants were performing the power manipulation
task and the old/new recognition task, EEG recordings were
obtained from 64 scalp sites according to the international 10-
20 system (Brain Products, Germany). Two additional electrodes
were placed below the left eye and on the outer canthi of the right
eye to record vertical and horizontal eye movements. The left and
right mastoids served as references (average mastoid reference),
and a ground electrode was placed at a medial frontal location.
Electrode impedances were maintained below 10 k. The data
were continuously digitized at 1,000 Hz/channel and filtered with
a bandpass filter of 0.5–35 Hz. ERP averages were computed
off-line. All ERP data were preprocessed using the Brain Vision
Analyzer version 1.0 (Brain Products). Eye movement artifacts
were excluded. Epochs of 700 ms for each electrode, including
a 100 ms prestimulus baseline, were time-locked to the onset
of the image stimulus and sorted by experimental group. All
trials in which EEG voltages exceeded a threshold of ±80 µV
were excluded from the averaging (Stekelenburg and de Gelder,
2004). Finally, on average, 51.51 trails per condition were
considered for further analysis. Moreover, a repeated mixed
model ANOVA suggested that the number of remaining trails was
not significantly different among the analysis cells (all ps>0.20).
It has been suggested that N170 is larger over the right
hemisphere than the left (Bentin et al., 1996). According to
previous research, we measured P100 and N170 responses at
four occipitotemporal electrode sites over the left and right
hemispheres (P7/P8, PO7/PO8; Kovács et al., 2006;Rossion and
Jacques, 2008). The P100 peak was defined as the maximum value
between 60 and 140 ms after the stimulus, and the N170 peak
was defined as the minimum value between 140 and 200 ms.
Amplitude maxima were obtained to calculate latencies.
Results
The recognition performance (d’ of accuracy scores and reaction
times), peak latencies, and amplitudes of P100 and N170
were submitted to repeated-measures ANOVAs with stimulus
orientation (upright, inverted), stimulus gender (male, female),
and hemispheric lateralization (left: P7/PO7, right: P8/PO8)
as within-subject factors; and power group (high-power, low-
power) and participant gender (man, woman) as between-
subject factors. Greenhouse–Geisser adjustments to the degrees
of freedom were used when appropriate.
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Behavioral Results
Manipulation check
Participants in the high-power group were rated as significantly
more powerful (M= 4.24, SD = 1.05) than those in the low-power
group [M= 2.29, SD = 0.89, t(34) = 6.04, p<0.001, Cohen’s
d= 2.07; α= 0.69].
Recognition performance (d’)
Neither a four-way interaction nor a three-way interaction was
found (all ps>0.14). We found effects of stimulus gender
[F(1,32) = 26.72, p<0.001, η2
p= 0.46] and stimulus orientation
[F(1,32) = 93.58, p<0.001, η2
p= 0.75]. These effects were due to
female bodies (M= 1.66, SE = 0.09) being recognized better than
male bodies (M= 1.33, SE = 0.10), and upright bodies (M= 1.86,
SE = 0.11) being recognized better than inverted bodies (M= 1.13,
SE = 0.08).
Small-scale meta-analysis
Although Study 1 and Study 2 did not have completely consistent
results for the effect of power on sexual objectification, to
combine the results obtained from these different studies and to
increase the precision of the parameter estimates, we computed
a small-scale meta-analysis with the meta package in R 3.4.1.
We did not include the control group from Study 1 that did not
receive a power manipulation.
To examine the effects of the power on sexual objectification,
we computed a new variable, D:
DM=(d’Mu −d’Mi)
DFe =(d’Feu −d’Fei)
d’Mu and d’Mi represent participants’ recognition performances
for upright and inverted images of sexualized males, respectively,
while d’Feu and d’Fei represent participants’ recognition
performances for upright and inverted images of sexualized
females, respectively.
We conducted meta-analyses for the two power groups
separately. Because there was low heterogeneity between the
different studies, we adopted a fixed-effect model. The analysis
of the studies examining differences between the recognition of
female targets and male targets in the high-power group (N= 51)
suggested a significant overall effect, Hedges’ g= 0.82, p<0.001,
95% CI = [0.41, 1.23]. In addition, there was low heterogeneity
across the two studies, Q(1) = 3.89, p= 0.05. However, in the
low-power group (N= 55), the analysis did not find a significant
overall effect, Hedges’ g= 0.27, p= 0.17, 95% CI = [−0.11, 0.64],
and the heterogeneity across the two studies was low, Q(1) = 2.68,
p= 0.10.
These analyses suggested that there were significant
differences for high-power participants when recognizing
male and female targets. Specifically, there were body inversion
effects and, in turn, less sexual objectification for male targets,
while there were no body inversion effects and more sexual
objectification for female targets. However, there were no
significant differences when recognizing both female and male
targets for participants in the low-power group, indicating the
absence of sexual objectification.
Electrophysiological Results
We analyzed the EEG data from the test phase. Figure 2 shows the
grand average ERP waveforms for the left and right hemispheres
in response to upright male bodies, inverted male bodies, upright
female bodies, and inverted female bodies for the two power
groups.
N170
The repeated ANOVA on the N170 amplitudes revealed a main
effect of hemispheric lateralization [F(1,32) = 17.81, p<0.001,
η2
p= 0.36], with larger N170 amplitudes for the right hemisphere
(M=−4.52 µV, SE = 1.04) than the left hemisphere (M=−1.73
µV, SE = 0.95); there was also a main effect of stimulus gender
[F(1,32) = 48.22, p<0.001, η2
p= 0.60], with larger N170
amplitudes for male bodies (M=−3.76 µV, SE = 0.93) than
female bodies (M=−2.49 µV, SE = 0.96). In addition, we found
a marginally significant interaction between stimulus gender,
stimulus orientation, and power group [F(1,32) = 3.88, p= 0.058,
η2
p= 0.11].
Further analysis examined the two-way interaction between
stimulus gender and stimulus orientation within the two power
groups. We found a significant interaction effect in the high-
power group [F(1,16) = 13.38, p= 0.002, η2
p= 0.46]. Pairwise
comparisons revealed larger N170 amplitudes for inverted males
(M=−4.50 µV, SE = 1.40) than upright males (M=−3.08 µV,
SE = 1.30, p= 0.02, 95% CI = [0.25, 2.60]). In contrast, N170
amplitudes for inverted females (M=−2.13 µV, SE = 1.27) were
similar to the N170 amplitudes associated with upright females
(M=−2.89 µV, SE = 1.35, p= 0.19, 95% CI = [−1.92, 0.41]).
The Bayes factor (BF = 1.80) supported the null hypothesis,
suggesting that there was no N170 amplitude inversion effect for
female bodies. Moreover, we did not find the predicted two-way
interaction in the low-power group [F(1,18) = 1.31, p= 0.27,
η2
p= 0.07].
A repeated measures ANOVA on N170 latencies revealed
main effects of hemispheric lateralization [F(1,32) = 9.73,
p= 0.004, η2
p= 0.23], stimulus orientation [F(1,32) = 74.60,
p<0.001, η2
p= 0.70], and stimulus gender [F(1,32) = 30.33,
p<0.001, η2
p= 0.49]. These effects were due to delayed N170
latencies for the left hemisphere (M= 173.71 ms, SE = 1.41)
compared to the right hemisphere (M= 170.54 ms, SE = 1.23);
delayed N170 latencies for female bodies (M= 174.02 ms,
SE = 1.31) compared to male bodies (M= 170.23 ms, SE = 1.23);
and delayed N170 latencies for inverted bodies (M= 176.68 ms,
SE = 1.43) compared to upright bodies (M= 167.57 ms,
SE = 1.22).
P100
A repeated measures ANOVA on P100 amplitudes showed main
effects of hemispheric lateralization [F(1,32) = 11.38, p= 0.002,
η2
p= 0.26] and stimulus gender [F(1,32) = 4.80, p= 0.04,
η2
p= 0.13]. These effects were due to larger P100 amplitudes for
the right hemisphere (M= 11.96 µV, SE = 0.94) compared to
the left hemisphere (M= 10.25 µV, SE = 0.85) and larger P100
amplitudes for female bodies (M= 11.29 µV, SE = 0.87) compared
to male bodies (M= 10.93 µV, SE = 0.86). Next, an interaction
between stimulus gender and hemispheric lateralization was
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FIGURE 2 | Grand average ERP waveforms for sexualized bodies. (A) Grand average ERP waveforms for the left hemisphere in the high-power group. (B) Grand
average ERP waveforms for the right hemisphere in the high-power group. (C) Grand average ERP waveforms for the left hemisphere in the low-power group.
(D) Grand average ERP waveforms for the right hemisphere in the low-power group.
found [F(1,32) = 4.25, p= 0.047, η2
p= 0.12]. Pairwise comparisons
revealed that in the left hemisphere, male (M= 9.93 µV,
SE = 0.92) and female (M= 10.05 µV, SE = 0.93) bodies evoked
similar P100 amplitudes, but for the right hemisphere, female
bodies (M= 12.06 µV, SE = 1.02) evoked larger P100 amplitudes
than did male bodies (M= 11.50 µV, SE = 1.01). Additionally,
there was a significant interaction between stimulus gender,
stimulus orientation, and power group [F(1,32) = 7.24, p= 0.01,
η2
p= 0.18]. Further analysis did not find a significant interaction
effect between stimulus gender and stimulus orientation in the
high-power group [F(1,16) = 1.16, p= 0.30, η2
p= 0.07]. However,
we did find an effect in the low-power group [F(1,18) = 7.12,
p= 0.02, η2
p= 0.28]. This finding was due to similar P100
amplitudes for upright males (M= 9.91 µV, SE = 1.17) and
inverted males (M= 10.61 µV, SE = 1.37, p= 0.22, 95%
CI = [−0.44, 1.83]) but significantly larger P100 amplitudes for
upright females (M= 10.76 µV, SE = 1.26) than for inverted
females (M= 10.00 µV, SE = 1.31, p= 0.04, 95% CI = [0.05,
1.46]).
A repeated measures ANOVA on P100 latencies revealed a
main effect of stimulus orientation [F(1,32) = 40.44, p<0.001,
η2
p= 0.56], with delayed P100 latencies for inverted bodies
(M= 127.49 ms, SE = 1.43) compared to upright bodies
(M= 123.03 ms, SE = 1.29). An interaction between stimulus
gender and stimulus orientation was found [F(1,32) = 13.29,
p= 0.001, η2
p= 0.29]. Pairwise comparisons revealed that inverted
bodies evoked delayed P100 latencies compared to upright bodies
for both male and female participants (all ps<0.005). Moreover,
there was a significant four-way interaction effect between
hemispheric lateralization, power group, stimulus gender and
stimulus orientation [F(1,32) = 4.85, p= 0.04, η2
p= 0.13]. Further
analysis suggested that in the high-power group, a three-way
interaction emerged [F(1,16) = 4.65, p= 0.047, η2
p= 0.23]. There
was no significant effect for the left hemisphere (all ps>0.05), but
for the right hemisphere, a two-way interaction effect was found
[F(1,16) = 10.57, p= 0.005, η2
p= 0.41]. Pairwise comparisons
revealed that there were delayed P100 latencies for inverted male
bodies (M= 126.18 ms, SE = 2.50) compared to upright male
bodies (M= 119.71 ms, SE = 2.06, p= 0.001, 95% CI = [−9.79,
−3.15]). In contrast, upright women (M= 123.38 ms, SE = 2.39)
evoked similar P100 latencies as inverted women (M= 123.76 ms,
SE = 2.99, p= 0.75, 95% CI = [−2.83, 2.06]). In the low-power
group, we did not find a three-way interaction [F(1,18) = 2.03,
p= 0.17, η2
p= 0.10]. Pairwise comparisons revealed that inverted
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bodies evoked larger P100 latencies than did upright bodies (all
p<0.05) regardless of stimulus gender.
Discussion
Study 2 investigated the effects of power on sexual objectification
using the body inversion effect and N170 amplitude inversion
effect as indicators of configural processing. We did not find the
body inversion effect on behavioral recognition performance. It is
possible that the limited sample size of the ERP study contributed
to the absence of power effects. An alternative explanation from
Sturm and Antonakis (2015) is that the power manipulation
matters. It is reported that although the power recall task is
common for previous power research (e.g., Galinsky et al., 2003;
Hogeveen et al., 2013;Civile and Obhi, 2016;Civile et al., 2016),
there are possible demand effects; that is, participants recall their
power experiences under the demand of the experimenter. The
demand effects might confound the reality of the power from the
power-related experiences. In addition, the manipulation check
by two blinded coders cannot distinguish the power experienced
in the recalled experience from the demand effects. The relatively
lower power in the high-power group (M= 4.24, SD = 1.05)
may indicate demand effects. However, the small-scale meta-
analysis suggested a robust body-inversion effect in the high-
power group, which suggested effects of power on objectification.
In addition, the electrophysiological data suggested that power
holders processed sexualized female bodies with more sexual
objectification, as evidenced by the absence of N170 amplitude
inversion effects, while N170 amplitude inversion effects were
seen for male bodies, showing less sexual objectification. In
contrast, powerless participants showed a significant N170
amplitude inversion effect for both sexualized male and female
bodies. In addition, a right hemisphere-specific N170 inversion
effect was found in the present study, which accounted for the
right hemispheric effects of N170 amplitudes (Bentin et al., 1996).
Rather than clearly demarking stages, we consider these
components (P100, N170) to represent a continuous and
progressive accumulation of information about the visual
stimulus encountered—in this case, a sexualized body. Larger
N170 amplitude inversion was found when processing sexualized
male bodies than when processing female bodies for power
holders but not for the powerless. However, there were larger
P100 amplitudes when processing upright females compared
to processing inverted females but similar P100 amplitudes for
upright males and inverted males for participants with low
power. These results support previous studies that suggested
that power increases the analytical processing of targets, leads to
more objectification, and induces an N170 amplitude inversion
effect. Having power grants individuals relative freedom from
punishment and, in turn, leads to various perceptual cognitive
effects. Power holders are more likely to perceive sexualized
women as objects with reduced humanity (e.g., competence,
morals, enthusiasm; Gruenfeld et al., 2008). The N170 is
considered to be the earliest ERP response to represent facial
features coding in the visual system (i.e., a face-selective
component). In addition, as early-stage electrical activity, the
N170 can be considered to be an indicator of automatic processes
(Kubota and Ito, 2007). An N170 response suggests that the
analytical processing of sexualized women is more automatic
(Bernard et al., 2017), which could be related to the notion
that objectifiers require considerable cognitive resources to resist
objectification (Tyler et al., 2017).
Contrary to N170 amplitude results, we did not find an
interaction between stimulus gender and stimulus orientation for
N170 latency; this finding is consistent with previous research
that suggested that the N170 latency is not a robust indicator of
an inversion effect (Bernard et al., 2017), as it can be delayed by
inverted bodies, intact bodies (Stekelenburg and de Gelder, 2004),
and bodies with disrupted spatial relationships among body parts
(Minnebusch et al., 2009;Bauser and Suchan, 2013). Another
interesting result is that there were longer N170 latencies for
inverted bodies (vs. upright bodies) and female bodies (vs. male
bodies). The underlying reasons for this effect might be that the
inversion disrupts the configural information of bodies and that
there are more specific features to recognize on female bodies
(e.g., hair style), which increases the difficulty in detecting and
encoding a body template for inverted bodies and female bodies,
which, in turn, leads to longer reaction times.
We observed enhanced P100 latencies when bodies were
presented in an inverted orientation. This finding is inconsistent
with a previous study that suggested body inversion did not affect
P100 latency or amplitude significantly (Righart and de Gelder,
2007). The P100 component is considered to be the earliest face-
sensitive component, and it occurs following a brief glance at
a face. The inversion effect on the P100 may be due to low-
level differences between upright and inverted faces (Jacques
and Rossion, 2007). However, some studies have suggested that
the P100 component is also sensitive to face orientation (Itier
and Taylor, 2004). In this case, one possible explanation for the
emergence of the P100 effect in the present study may be due
to the whole-body stimulus we used. That is, the effect may
reflect the presence of the faces but not the body parts of the
stimuli. However, explanations must remain speculative at this
stage. Another result worthy of attention is the presence of an
interaction between stimulus gender and stimulus orientation
for participants in high-power group in right hemisphere P100
latencies. The P100 latency inversion effect was significant for
male bodies but not for female bodies in the high-power group,
but this effect did not emerge in the left hemisphere or in
the low-power group. On one hand, these findings could be
due to the effects of power; on the other hand, research has
suggested that P100 responses to an inversion effect may parallel
the N170 responses, which are more pronounced in the right
hemisphere than in the left (Bentin et al., 1996;Itier and Taylor,
2004).
GENERAL DISCUSSION
Across the two studies, we examined whether social power leads
to increased sexual objectification using behavioral and ERP
designs in Chinese samples. We found that being primed to
social power increased participants’ sexual objectification toward
sexualized women and that this effect was not affected by
participant gender. The results support the large spread of sexual
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objectification in contemporary cultural practices (Fredrickson
and Roberts, 1997;Bernard et al., 2017).
By extending prior research regarding power and sexual
objectification, the current research contributed a great deal of
information. First, this study is the first to explore the effects
of social power on sexual objectification using a combination
of behavioral and electrophysiological evidence. The current
research revealed that the effects of power on the processing
of sexualized bodies were seen not only by increased analytical
processing with a lower body inversion effect (Civile and Obhi,
2016;Civile et al., 2016) but also by a lower N170 amplitude
inversion effect. These findings suggest that when participants
were primed with social power, approach-related processes were
activated, which promoted analytic processing toward sexualized
women.
Second, we extend the objectification theory by using
Chinese samples and found that sexual objectification exists
in Eastern culture, especially under power conditions. Sexual
objectification has been suggested to be common in Western
cultures (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997;Bernard et al., 2012;
Loughnan et al., 2015). However Loughnan et al. (2015)
suggested that cultural norms could affect self-objectification
and other-objectification and that there is more objectification
in traditional nations of objectification research (e.g., Australia,
Italy, United Kingdom, and United States) than in non-
traditional nations (e.g., India, Japan, and Pakistan). We found
that the inversion effect was restricted to sexualized women in
Chinese cultural context, which is consistent with the initial
finding in Bernard et al. (2012). However, recent studies by
Cogoni et al. (2018) confirmed that the degree of sexualization
and the visual properties of targets, as well as participants’
attention biases, all accounted for the presence/absence of
inversion effect. In addition, the extent of sexualization of the
targets affected the inversion effect for both male and female
targets. Bernard et al. (2018c) also added evidence that the
effects of postural suggestiveness on cognitive objectification
were not moderated by target gender. However, previous research
mainly focused on Caucasian participants, and no certainty exists
on whether these patterns of results also apply to the Asian
population, which makes our study important to fill this gap.
According to findings from sociology, the gender inequality
in postreform urban China has increased greatly in the past
40 years. The socialism-to-market transition of the state facilitates
the collapse of the danwei system (i.e., work-unit of the State-
owned enterprise and collective-owned enterprise in the socialist
era) and the decline of Marxist egalitarian ideology, which, in
turn, promote the resurgence of Confucian patriarchal traditions.
The changes in the public sphere and private sphere as well as
the state gender ideology all contribute to the separation of the
family and the labor market. Chinese women suffer much more
family-work conflict than their male counterparts (Ji et al., 2017).
Within this cultural context, the unfavorable situation of Chinese
women compels them to struggle to find a balance between work
and family. In this case, the objectification of women by men
(i.e., the advantaged group) and women themselves (i.e., the
disadvantaged group) could be more prevalent, as suggested by
the saying, “Marrying well counts more than career.” Actually,
it suggested that there is a predominant role of husbands’ class
positions in determining married women’s happiness (Chen,
2018). Thus, it is possible that men are usually the powerful and
the objectifier while women are the powerless and the objectified,
even for those women participants primed with high power in the
laboratory. On the other hand, the restriction of sexual expression
in traditional cultures may lead to the reduced sexually objectified
portrayal of women in Asian media compared to Western
cultures (Civile et al., 2016). In summary, our findings provide
evidence that sexual objectification is common to Western and
Eastern cultural practices, especially in the power contexts. These
results have implications for understanding those females in the
workplace who may take sexual objectification for granted.
We should note some limitations of the current work, which,
in turn, suggest potential avenues for future research. First,
although previous research has suggested that the concepts and
behavioral tendencies associated with power can be activated
whenever the possession of power is involved, consciously
or unconsciously (Galinsky et al., 2003), the lack of power
situation cues that resulted from the power recalling task and
the limited power experiences of college students might limit the
generalizability of the findings. Thus, research including actual
superiors and subordinates would allow for greater ecological
validity. Second, although our findings extend the study of
sexual objectification into Eastern cultural practices and found
effects of power on sexual objectification within Chinese culture,
we cannot answer the question of cross-cultural effects. Future
research could investigate cultural differences in the effects of
power on objectification in various cultural populations and
take cultural variables into consideration. Third, we adopted
body-inversion paradigm in behavioral experiment and old-
new task in EEG experiment. There may be confounds due
to the former being focused on immediate memory processing
and the latter on early visual processing (140–200 ms; Bernard
et al., 2018c). Future research would benefit from unifying
the paradigms adopted, although there is evidence of cognitive
objectification from early visual processing (Bernard et al., 2017,
2018a), attentional processing (Nummenmaa et al., 2012;Gervais
et al., 2013;Bernard et al., 2017), immediate memory processing
(e.g., Bernard et al., 2015;Civile and Obhi, 2016), and long-
term memory processing (Gervais et al., 2012). In addition,
the different asymmetry between upright and inverted images
presented is a fundamental limitation in Study 1. Although
Bernard et al. (2018c) found that posture suggestiveness in
the recognition paradigm was more responsible for cognitive
objectification, this does not necessarily imply that it has the
same effect in our Study 1. Cognitive objectification should be
present regardless of the kind of task adopted to measure it, but
the mediating or moderating variables matter. Future studies are
needed to consider and control the presence of those perceptual
confounds, such as asymmetries, complexity, colors, and so on
(Cogoni et al., 2018). Finally, it is reported that Asian women
are usually portrayed in mass media (e.g., advertisement) in
their traditional gender roles in family, such as housewives and
mothers (Frith et al., 2005), while Asian men are portrayed as
bread winners with mental and civil abilities (Yang et al., 2005).
Thus, future investigation of sexual objectification will benefit
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Xiao et al. Social Power and Sexual Objectification
from taking the specific portrayal of sexualized males and females
into consideration.
In sum, across two studies, the present work provides both
behavioral and neural evidence of the effects of social power
on sexual objectification in a Chinese cultural context. These
findings could contribute to the extension of objectification
theory and shed a new light on the explorations of the
mechanisms of the effects of power on sexual objectification.
ETHICS STATEMENT
This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Southwest
University of China. The experiments were conducted in
accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. And all participants
gave written informed consent after detailed explanation of the
experiments. Also after the experiments, they were paid for their
participation.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
LX conceived, designed, and conducted the study,
analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript. BL,
FW, and LZ helped a lot in the mending of the
manuscript. All authors involved in the research
process, discussed results, and commented on the
manuscript.
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Conflict of Interest Statement: The authors declare that the research was
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be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The reviewer GB and handling Editor declared their shared affiliation at the time
of review.
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