Preliminary Evidence of EEG Connectivity Changes during Self-Objectification of Workers.

Economic objectification is a form of dehumanization in which workers are treated as tools for enhancing productivity. It can lead to self-objectification in the workplace, which is when people perceive themselves as instruments for work. This can cause burnout, emotional drain, and a modification of self-perception that involves a loss of human attributes such as emotions and reasoning while focusing on others' perspectives for evaluating the self. Research on workers self-objectification has mainly analyzed the consequences of this process without exploring the brain activity that underlies the individual's experiences of self-objectification. Thus, this project explores the electroencephalographic (EEG) changes that occur in participants during an economic objectifying task that resembled a job in an online store. After the task, a self-objectification questionnaire was applied and its resulting index was used to label the participants as self-objectified or non-self-objectified. The changes over time in EEG event-related synchronization (ERS) and partial directed coherence (PDC) were calculated and compared between the self-objectification groups. The results show that the main differences between the groups in ERS and PDC occurred in the beta and gamma frequencies, but only the PDC results correlated with the self-objectification group. These results provide information for further understanding workers' self-objectification. These EEG changes could indicate that economic self-objectification is associated with changes in vigilance, boredom, and mind-wandering.

Development and Validation of the Mexican Public Open Spaces Tool (MexPOS).

Public open spaces (POS) are "publicly owned spaces such as parks, green areas, squares, marketplaces, streets and highways which are of public access". Some attributes could increase or decrease participants' attendance. Thus, reliable and valid audit tools are needed in order to measure these attributes. This study aimed to develop and validate a tool to assess POS features within the Mexico City context. The Mexican Public Open Spaces Tool (MexPOS) was developed based on (1) two validated POS audit tools, (2) several visits to the POS, (3) pilot testing, and (4) multiple work sessions with a group of specialists. The original tool included 181 items divided into nine sections. Trained personnel visited and evaluated 944 POS in Mexico City. An exploratory factor analysis was performed to examine the construct validity of the items and the relationship between the subscales. The final model resulted in seven factors: (1) Food and Wellness Environment (α = 0.15), (2) Maintenance (α = 0.81), (3) Amenities (α = 0.72), (4) Legibility (α = 0.59), (5) Security (α = 0.48), (6) Perceived Environment (α = 0.65), and (7) Urban Environment (α = 0.58). Our study highlights the relevance of using a validated tool to measure POS characteristics related to participants' attendance to help assess infrastructure improvements and identify priority areas for changing socio-urban environments for physical activity.