自我客体化的女性对身体线索的注意和记忆偏向

Attention and Recognition Bias towards Body-Related Cues Among Self-Objectified Female

采用点探测任务和再认任务探讨高低自我客体化水平的女性对积极身体词和消极身体词的注意和记忆偏向。结果发现,高自我客体化的女性对积极身体词存在注意脱离困难,对积极身体词的再认反应时显著快于低自我客体化的女性。研究结果证实了自我客体化的女性存在对积极身体词的注意和记忆偏向,说明自我客体化使女性对积极身体信息分配了更多的认知资源,可能会妨碍任务表现。

Our research aims to prove that self-objectified female distributes many of their cognitive resources to body-related information. Objectification Theory predicted that self-objectified female cognitive resources were consumed by the habitual monitoring of their external appearance, and limited cognitive resources were available to other activities of self-objectified female, so self-objectified female had poor performance on task. However, few researchers manifested the cognitive resources were distributed to body-related information when a woman was being selfobjectified. Our study aims to manipulate female state self-objectification by two different finds of wearing situations, and then investigate female attention and recognition bias towards positive and negative body-related words by dot probe paradigm and recognition paradigm. We hope that participants with HSO have the attention and recognition bias towards body-related cues while participants with LSO not.60 female college students were divided into two groups randomly and each group consisted of 30 participants. One group tried on revealing tight-fitting clothing, as high state self-objectification(HSO) group;the other group tried on full loose clothing, as low state self-objectification(LSO) group. A modified visual dot probe paradigm was adopted to measure attention bias. We used 8 attractive body-related words, 8 unattractive body-related words and 32 neutral words as stimuli. There were totally three types of word pairing conditions: attractive-neutral words(A-N), unattractive-neutral words(U-N), and neutral-neutral words(N-N). A recognition paradigm was adopted to measure recognition bias. The word stimuli of recognition paradigm consisted of 32 old words that appeared in foregone dot probe paradigm and 32 new words. The 32 words were made up of 8 attractive body-related words, 8 unattractive body-related words and 16 neutral words. At first, participants tried on a suit of clothing and then completed Body Surveillance Subscale in a completely private dressing room. Next, participants completed attention task and then completed recognition task.HSO group had greater state self-objectification than LSO group(F(1, 59)=18.88, p<.001, η_p^2 =.28), showing we manipulated state selfobjectification of participants successfully. We worked out the bias index(BI), orienting index(OI) and disengaging index(DI) of dot probe paradigm according to reaction time towards word stimuli. The DI towards attractive body-related words of participants with HSO was significantly greater than zero(t(1, 58) = 3.10, p <.01, d=.80). This finding demonstrated that participants with HSO had difficulty in attention disengagement from attractive body-related words. And the results of recognition paradigm showed that there was an interaction of reaction time between state self-objectification and word type(F(2, 58) = 4.22, p <.05, η_p^2=.07). The participants with HSO were significantly faster than the participants with LSO when stimuli were attractive body-related words(F(1, 58) = 4.66, p <.05, η_p^2=.07). This finding showed that participants with HSO had a deeper cognitive process to attractive body-related words. In summary, participants with HSO had the attention and recognition bias towards body-related cues.In conclusion, our results demonstrated that cognitive resources were distributed to body-related information when a woman was being selfobjectified. The finding explains what consume recognition resources of self-objectified women and why they have poor performance on high-level or challenging tasks.