"Intermission!" A short-term social media fast reduces self-objectification among pre-teen and teen dancers.

Social media use is pervasive among youth and is associated with body image disturbance and self-objectification. The present study investigated whether a 3-day social media fast in a sample for whom social media is especially salient, female adolescent dancers, can mitigate such negative effects. Through an online survey, 65 pre-teen and teen girls, aged 10-19, completed measures of self-objectification (body surveillance and body shame), self-esteem and self-compassion both prior to and following three days of abstaining from all social media. During the fast, girls reflected on their experiences in group messages on the messaging app, WhatsApp. Overall, the fast had positive effects on participants, for whom body surveillance and body shame was significantly reduced after the fast. Self-compassion significantly mediated the change in both body surveillance and body shame, and self-esteem was a significant mediator of improvements in body shame. The content of girls' group messages revealed a number of themes, such as more positive mental states during the fast. Future research should continue to examine the potential of brief social media fasts as a means to alleviate appearance pressures adolescent girls face on these platforms in daily life.

When looking 'hot' means not feeling cold: Evidence that self-objectification inhibits feelings of being cold.

Self-objectification, the internalization of an observer's appearance-based perspective of one's body, has been theorized and demonstrated to reduce body awareness among women. In this field study, we propose self-objectification as the mechanism to explain the oft-observed phenomenon where women wearing little clothing appear unbothered by cold weather, positing that self-objectification obstructs women's feelings of cold. We surveyed women outside nightclubs on cold nights, assessed self-objectification, and asked participants to report how cold they felt. Anonymous photos were taken and coded for amount of skin exposure. We hypothesized that self-objectification would moderate the relationship between clothing coverage and reports of feeling cold. Our hypothesis was supported: women low in self-objectification showed a positive, intuitive, relationship between skin exposure and perceptions of coldness, but women more highly focused on their appearance did not feel colder when wearing less clothing. These findings offer support for the relationship between self-objectification and awareness of bodily sensations in the context of a naturalistic setting. We discuss implications of these findings, and also consider limitations, an alternative explanation, and directions for future research.

Psychometric properties and validation of the Phenomenological Body Shame Scale - Revised (PBSS-R).

Body shame is a common experience among women yet a challenging phenomenon to operationalize, and measures of body shame often fail to capture its embodied aspects. In this article, we examined the structural and psychometric properties of an existing measure of body shame that was developed by Fredrickson et al. (1998) to assess the motivational and behavioral components of feeling body shame. Across three studies, women participants completed the Phenomenological Body Shame Scale (PBSS) and measures of theoretically related constructs in counterbalanced order via online survey platforms. The results demonstrate evidence of construct validity for an abbreviated, 8-item measure of phenomenological body shame (PBSS-R). In Study 1 (n = 341 community women), we evaluated and confirmed the scale's structural validity as a unidimensional measure. In Study 2 (n = 204 college women), we demonstrated positive associations between the PBSS-R and negative body image attitudes and behaviors, and negative associations with self-compassion, supporting the scale's external validity. In Study 3 (n = 235 community women), the PBSS-R explained variance in intuitive eating and happiness above theoretically related measures of self-objectification and body shame, supporting the scale's incremental validity. We recommend use of this abbreviated measure to assess the more embodied and less evaluative features of body shame in women.

Smile pretty and watch your back: Personal safety anxiety and vigilance in objectification theory.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported online in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology on Nov 19 2020 (see record 2020-89294-001). In Table 4, the mean, standard deviation, and range for the Personal Safety Anxiety and Vigilance (PSAVS) variable were incorrect.] Objectification Theory posits that everyday encounters with sexual objectification carry a diffuse nonspecific sense of threat that engenders personal safety anxiety in women. In this article, we provide direct evidence for this tenet across 5 studies and 1,665 participants using multiple methods. Study 1 (N = 207) and Study 2 (N = 161) explored and confirmed the factor structure of the Personal Safety Anxiety and Vigilance Scale (PSAVS), a measure of personal safety anxiety, and provided evidence for the reliability and construct validity of its scores. Study 3 (N = 363) showed that personal safety anxiety is a conceptually different construct for women and men, and differentially mediated the relation between sexual objectification and restricted freedom of movement and the relation between self-objectification and restricted freedom of movement for women and men. Study 4 (N = 460) included a comprehensive test of personal safety anxiety within an expanded Objectification Theory model, which supported personal safety anxiety as a mediator of the links from sexual and self-objectification to women's restricted freedom of movement. Study 5 (N = 474) replicated these results while also adjusting for specific fears of crime and rape. Our findings offer a newly validated assessment tool for future research on safety anxiety, illuminate the real and lasting sense of threat engendered by everyday sexual objectification, and broaden understanding of the mental and physical constraints on women's lived experiences posited in Objectification Theory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

How does it feel to be treated like an object? Direct and indirect effects of exposure to sexual objectification on women's emotions in daily life.

Exposure to sexual objectification is an everyday experience for many women, yet little is known about its emotional consequences. Fredrickson and Roberts' (1997) objectification theory proposed a within-person process, wherein exposure to sexual objectification causes women to adopt a third-person perspective on their bodies, labeled self-objectification, which has harmful downstream consequences for their emotional well-being. However, previous studies have only tested this model at the between-person level, making them unreliable sources of inference about the proposed intraindividual psychological consequences of objectification. Here, we report the results of Bayesian multilevel structural equation models that simultaneously tested Fredrickson and Roberts' (1997) predictions both within and between persons, using data from 3 ecological momentary assessment (EMA) studies of women's (N = 268) experiences of sexual objectification in daily life. Our findings support the predicted within-person indirect effect of exposure to sexual objectification on increases in negative and self-conscious emotions via self-objectification. However, lagged analyses suggest that the within-person indirect emotional consequences of exposure to sexual objectification may be relatively fleeting. Our findings advance research on sexual objectification by providing the first comprehensive test of the within-person process proposed by Fredrickson and Roberts' (1997) objectification theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Registered Replication Report: Strack, Martin, & Stepper (1988).

According to the facial feedback hypothesis, people's affective responses can be influenced by their own facial expression (e.g., smiling, pouting), even when their expression did not result from their emotional experiences. For example, Strack, Martin, and Stepper (1988) instructed participants to rate the funniness of cartoons using a pen that they held in their mouth. In line with the facial feedback hypothesis, when participants held the pen with their teeth (inducing a "smile"), they rated the cartoons as funnier than when they held the pen with their lips (inducing a "pout"). This seminal study of the facial feedback hypothesis has not been replicated directly. This Registered Replication Report describes the results of 17 independent direct replications of Study 1 from Strack et al. (1988), all of which followed the same vetted protocol. A meta-analysis of these studies examined the difference in funniness ratings between the "smile" and "pout" conditions. The original Strack et al. (1988) study reported a rating difference of 0.82 units on a 10-point Likert scale. Our meta-analysis revealed a rating difference of 0.03 units with a 95% confidence interval ranging from -0.11 to 0.16.

The morphology of supragranular pyramidal neurons in the human insular cortex: a quantitative Golgi study.

Although the primate insular cortex has been studied extensively, a comprehensive investigation of its neuronal morphology has yet to be completed. To that end, neurons from 20 human subjects (10 males and 10 females; N = 600) were selected from the secondary gyrus brevis, precentral gyrus, and postcentral gyrus of the left insula. The secondary gyrus brevis was generally more complex in terms of dendritic/spine extent than either the precentral or postcentral insular gyri, which is consistent with the posterior-anterior gradient of dendritic complexity observed in other cortical regions. The male insula had longer, spinier dendrites than the female insula, potentially reflecting sex differences in interoception. In comparing the current insular data with regional dendritic data quantified from other Brodmann's areas (BAs), insular total dendritic length (TDL) was less than the TDL of high integration cortices (BA6beta, 10, 11, 39), but greater than the TDL of low integration cortices (BA3-1-2, 4, 22, 44). Insular dendritic spine number was significantly greater than both low and high integration regions. Overall, the insula had spinier, but shorter neurons than did high integration cortices, and thus may represent a specialized type of heteromodal cortex, one that integrates crude multisensory information crucial to interoceptive processes.