The Political Consequences of Self-Objectification

• In Event: Experimental Methods and Gender Research

Abstract

Women are consistently objectified and sexualized in popular culture, the media, and in the political sphere. The objectification of the female body has become normalized in American society. An even more normatively disturbing trend has been the way political actors have discussed women and their role in politics. Women are subject to a constant barrage of objectifying images and words. This persistent objectification leads to a phenomenon known as self-objectification, which occurs when individuals internalize observers’ perspectives of their physical bodies. Psychologists have documented the adverse effects that self-objectification can have on a woman’s mental health and cognitive functioning. This paper explores the potential political consequences of self-objectification, specifically its potential effects on the gender gap in political efficacy.
Internal political efficacy is the belief regarding one’s own competence to understand and participate effectively in politics (Niemi, Craig, and Mattei 1991). The literature that has focused exclusively on internal efficacy has demonstrated that women are less politically efficacious than men (Verba, Burns, and Schlozman 1997), though the traditional explanations for this disparity are dated and no longer sufficient. Women are now increasingly integrated into the workforce, have surpassed men in terms of educational attainment, and have access to more resources than ever. Scholars have found that existing structural differences can no longer explain why the gender gap in engagement persists (Akeson and Rapoport 2003; Preece 2016).
This project looks at self-objectification as one of the micro-level determinants of internal political efficacy. Women who are high self-objectifiers fail to see themselves as agents of change. When women self-objectify, their cognitive resources are significantly diminished (Fredrickson, et al. 1998). Gapinski (2003) found evidence that a state of heightened objectification increased negative feelings, decreased intrinsic motivation, lowered self-efficacy, and as Fredrickson et al. (1998) found, diminished cognitive functioning. Given these findings, it is reasonable to hypothesize that women who are high self-objectifiers have less internal political efficacy than women who are low self-objectifiers.
This theory lends itself to an experimental design in which the level of self-objectification is manipulated through the treatments. This allows for the isolation of self-objectification as a mechanism that affects internal political efficacy. In particular, I utilize an emotion-inducing technique used in the field of psychology (Fischhoff et al. 2012) to manipulate participants’ state level of self-objectification. The treatment will temporarily make physical appearance salient priming a heightened state of objectification. Because participants will be writing about their own life experiences to prime this state, this treatment has a high degree of ecological validity that is rare in experimental research.
The literature on efficacy has become somewhat stagnant in the field of political science. However, if we are interested in the normative goal of closing the gender gap in political engagement, it is essential that we understand the determinants of internal political efficacy. Without a sense of competence and agency in the political sphere, women will never believe in their own ability to effectuate change in politics. This necessitates an understanding of how women conceive of their role in the political realm.

Author

• Claire Gothreau, Temple University