Adopting the Sexual Gaze: Exposure to Sexually Objectifying Music Videos and Visual Attention Toward Women

• In Event: Processing Stories, Films, and Music

Abstract

The current study aimed to investigate the effect of exposure to sexually objectifying music videos on viewers’ subsequent gaze patterns. Participants (N = 116; 63 women, 53 men) were either exposed to music videos high in sexual objectification or low in sexual objectification. Afterwards, participants’ eye movements were measured while viewing images of 36 females with varying degrees of body shape (i.e., ideal size model, plus size model) and degree of dress (i.e., fully dressed, scantly dressed, partially clad). Our findings suggest that sexually objectifying music videos increase the sexual gaze among women, but not among men. Thus, women who were primed with sexually objectifying imagery absorbed the presented gaze pattern and looked more on female bodies than on female faces. This effect was independent from the body shape and the degree of dress. This suggests that all kinds of women may be targeted by visual sexual objectification.

Authors

• Kathrin Karsay, University of Vienna, Department of Communication

• Jorg Matthes, U of Vienna

• Phillip Platzer, U of Vienna

• Myrna Plinke, University of Vienna