Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Psychological Science

Department

Psychology

First Reader/Committee Chair

Donna Garcia

Abstract

When women are exposed to sexually objectifying advertisements, they experience many adverse effects such as increases in self-objectification and dehumanization of other women (Vaes, Paladino, and Puiva, 2011). Because these effects might be amplified by food advertisements in which the line between a woman’s body and a food item is non-discernible, we examined whether “women as consumable” advertisements lead women to implicitly self-dehumanize and experience reduced body satisfaction. Women (N=129) viewed a woman in hamburger advertisement. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, control condition (non-sexualized woman with a burger), sexualized condition (topless woman with burger), and edible condition (burger and naked woman are inseparable). After viewing and rating the advertisement, participants were given a cellphone and told to take a profile picture for a later task. The number of selfies they took before selecting their picture was used to indicate appearance satisfaction. Participants then completed a new IAT that assessed implicit self-dehumanization. They then filled out a series of scales that measured their satisfaction with the selfie they took, appearance self-esteem, and self-objectification. I predicted that women in the edible condition would have higher implicit self-dehumanization, take more selfies, report lower appearance self-esteem, and report higher self-objectification relative to the other conditions. My findings could extend the extant research to understand how explicit portrayals of women as objects for male consumption affect women’s psychological outcomes.

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