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[Below is the original script. But a few changes may have been made during the recording of this audio podcast.]
Please note: this podcast is longer than the usual one minute as it includes quotes from the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.
Do men objectify women? Well some say there may be a tendency, since there’s a booming business in pornography. But to answer the how, when and why men objectify women requires some science.
Princeton psychologist Susan Fiske presented findings from a new study this past Sunday, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Chicago, where she and her colleagues compared, "...heterosexual men’s perceptions of scantily clad women, scantily clad men, and fully clothed men and women."
And what they found is the 21 male subjects had the best memory for photos of sexy bikini-clad women. No surprise. Then they had the men look at the photos while their brains were scanned and what she found was that, "...this memory correlated with activation in part of the brain that is a pre-motor, having intentions to act on something, so it was as if they immediately thought about how they might act on these bodies."
Fiske explained that the areas, the premotor cortex and posterior middle temporal gyrus, typically light up when one anticipates using tools, like a screwdriver. "I’m not saying that they literally think these photographs of women are photographs of tools per se, or photographs of non-humans, but what the brain imaging data allow us to do is to look at it as scientific metaphor. That is, they are reacting to these photographs as people react to objects."
Fisk also tested the men for levels of sexism and found a surprising effect those who scored high on this test, "...the hostile sexists were likely to deactivate the part of the brain that thinks about other people's intentions. The lack of activation of this social cognition area is really odd, because it hardly ever happens. It’s a very reliable effect, that the medial prefrontal cortex comes online when people think about other people, see pictures of them, imagine other people."
"Normally when you examine social cognition, people’s aim is to figure out what the other person is thinking and intending. And we see in these data really no evidence of that. So the deactivation of medial prefrontal cortex to these pictures is really kind of shocking."
To be sure this is a preliminary study, and Fiske intends to follow up with a larger sample, but nonetheless she concludes, "...these findings are all consistent with the idea that they are responding to these photographs as if they are responding to objects and not to people with independent agency." Fiske suggested that if there are sexualized pictures of women in the workplace, there may be a spillover effect, perhaps influencing the way people perceive female colleagues.
—Christie Nicholson
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36 Comments
Add CommentSo we now know that when men see an object (image) their brain shows patterns that indicate a desire to use the object (soft-core porn) in accordance with the object/tool's function (masturbation). Wow science is amazing... go feminism!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis study seems to be jumping to a lot of conclusions... Does the prefrontal cortex deactivate on seeing all images of people who the subject doesn't know? Because who cares what any of them think, and just because an area of the brain reacts both to tools and to a picture of a girl in a bikini doesn't necessarily mean the subject vies them as an "object" or tool. The conclusions drawn by this study seem a bit ridiculous
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also don't take much away from this. If a construction worker were shown pictures of houses and tools, I'm sure that his brain would register in the same manner. In other words, he is thinking "I have work to do". He associates pictures of his daily implements with effort and primes himself for that. What is the difference with sexual work that he perceives needs to be done? Objectifying is a means toward an end. His brain works in a manner that has been shown to achieve success. I'm sure a female brain does the same thing. It is just the difference in how men and women perceive sex.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI tend to agree with inktank there, unless the same studies are repeated with men looking at models (live women) as well as with women looking at images and models these results are really meaningless.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost folks have always sensed that people who treat others as objects behave as if "there is something different about them." I think this is it. It will be interesting to see if scientists can find out more. I wonder if there is anything that can be done for those who have no choice but to treat others as objects...tools even, for self gratification alone. This phenomenon is not characteritic of all males. This goes deeper than a male vs female perception about sex thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnow we have 60 seconds in 3 minutes?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNeither the researchers nor those who commented here seemed to have noticed that a woman who poses in a bikini is already making the statement "this is about sex." A bikini is a rhetorical statement. It does not represent the female body in a state of nature. But if a male observer reacts in the terms of dialog that have been offered, he is seen as a brute. This treatment is typical of the way feminists deny female responsibility in the social-sexual dialog.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYet another biased study designed to reinforce an existing opinion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBad pseudo-science.
My heart lifts upon reading that so many view this kind of 'science' as crap. I imagine that at least $50,000 of tax-payer money ($1000 per scan, + salaries of techs/PIs) was spent to fund this experiment. When will these brain scanners learn that a correlation between a stimulus and a brain region provides no knowledge other than that correlation? My bigger beef is that it takes no more than a high-school education to do these kinds of experiments. Stick a person in a scanner, show them some pictures, run a software package to find 'activity', and write your paper.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Fisk also tested the men for levels of sexism" .... We now have sexism meters??? Can anyone tell me the units of measure for "sexism"? Gee, ya don't think there's an agenda here do ya??/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is news how? And these egg heads really needed to do a study to tell them this?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy can't people (feminists especially), just accept that there may be some validity to the notion that males and females are just wired differently and that it often has little to do with the way they were raised. I have seen a lot of comments that are very skeptical of this study, but I doubt that it has anything to do with the quality of the study, rather, it is a lack of acceptance for the biological discrepancies between the sexes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting, but I think this needs some control references to be really meaningful. For example, how do men's minds react when they look at pictures of men in business suits, for example? Or how to women react to seeing photos of women in bikinis? But the bit about how hostile sexists reacted is rather telling.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile I find the continual discoveries of cognitive sciences vital, I'm somewhat in agreement with Candide; this study has such harmful potential to provide "scientific justification" for gender inequality & violence. Perhaps similar regions of the brain really do act up in a male reaction to gendered/sexed imagery, but what the study fails to explore (perhaps not the researcher's fault) is the degree to which the actual cognitive function has been shaped by cultural/environmental factors. After decades of years spent in a patriarchal structure, can't mere habit encode itself? To say female objectification is a "natural reaction" seems to me a lazy intellectual response - the easiest response simply because social influences provide a convenient path for making a swift conclusion. The brain is more intricate, more marvelous, more full of possibilities & complexities than I think we've even verged upon unearthing. What this study ought to do is push us towards a continual exploration of *why.*
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisit doesnt play!why???
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisetch
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@bestofnothing: it's saddens me when I see anyone who thinks they should decide where science will take them. Explorations of one area of science often yields results in others. For example, there are those who say the LHC was a tremendous waste of money, but the technology designed for that project has been ported over to producing ever more accurate radiation technology used to treat cancer. The camera technology used on the Hubble helped launch the consumer digital camera market.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps, by understanding how a man's brain reacts and "naturally" causes him to think of women as objects, perhaps it'll lead to new therapy techniques that will make it less likely that those who actually act on those "natural" impulses. In order to correct a flawed behavior, you have to understand how it works.
This IS an observation, but is NOT scientific. There is absolutely no control, the sample is too small and probably biased, and the prejudice of the observers is evident. They clearly sought this result and designed the observation to show their hypothesis. What to do? I would be interested to see if my brain reacted differently to pictures of my wife, with whom I have very recent and vivid sexual memories, and the bikini clad subject pictures. I love and respect my wife very much and no longer have the conquest desire (been there, done that), so I would probably be a good test subject.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes anyone agree that somebody must be getting paid by the number of visits to this site, considering the religious and sexual nature of the most attended discussions? I do want to be stimulated when I go to Sciam, but not in these ways.
@notslic: should they have spent millions of dollars on a country-wide study, with thousands of participants first, or should they do what they did: start with a small, informal study to see if there's anything to the hypothesis? All of your points are valid, and will probably be accounted for in the later study. For now, it's sufficient to have an observation that might indicate something interesting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSpoonmanWoS... Thank you for your prompt response. My point is..did Fisk win a contest or something? This study doesn't teach anything or even sightly merit discussion at the AAAS meeting, or, for that matter, even the discussion that we are having. I think the responses that she got are answered by the reproduction instinct that is hard-wired into us all. You are absolutely correct that steps must be taken towards the big and meaningful conclusions. I apologize.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA healthy debate never demands apologies. :) I agree with your conclusion (that the reproduction instinct is hard-wired), but what I took away from this summary was significantly more. That some men seem to have an inability to overcome these "primal urges". And, there's varying levels in between...some men merely think of women as sex objects, others dehumanize them entirely. Due to just this brief study, we can now see that in the worst of these cases it's not just a psychological issue, but there's a physiological component as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWithout understanding how a properly functioning brain would react, we can't fix a broken one.
I'm sorry- but this study would have been much more interesting if they had done it on both genders. By doing so they set it up so that men appeared to be pigs based on their findings. Bad science... booo
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm sorry- but this study would have been much more interesting and/or enlightening if they had done it on both genders. By doing so they set it up so that men appeared to be pigs based on their findings. Bad science... booo
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSpoonmanWoS...Maybe we are looking at something that is more cultural than evolutionary? For example, the Muslim culture allows for multiple wives, but not multiple husbands; French culture has more tolerance for sexuality; Americans seem to be obsessed with pornography; Women go topless in Australia at the beach...etc.?? The overcoming of primal urges is very interesting also. Couldn't it be argued that the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia is simply a matter of degree? In both cases there is an inability to "overcome" the different sexual urges. In most cases, homosexuality is considered benign and untreatable, but pedophilia is abhorrent, culturally speaking. Would homosexuals see scantily clad men as objects?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are correct again...there is some very interesting research to be done on this subject.
More than once, my college-educated wife remarked to me that men don't seem to see the actual signals women are showing to men. I'm sure that this was for my "education" (ha-ha), but she really meant it and explained a few examples.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, I agree with those who say this particular study is one-sided and too narrow in focus (toward a politically inspired foregone conclusion).
I am more of the opinion that this mechanism is an evolved trait: where at some time in the past, it was held a definite survival advantage (in this case, for males). It's initial purpose may have become "extinct" but it remains the basis for such things as spontaneous acts of heroism, as well.
e.g., A man sees someone drowning or trapped in a burning car: he instantly recognizes there is "something for him to do" and acts - manipulating himself and whatever tools he may improvise to save a life.
So lets not go off half-cocked here (okay, that's a window for a joke but I'm not stopping now): such studies should always include a context where the survival value is included. The way we deal with the modern world is too often to invent reasons for human actions being "right or wrong."
Which is epistemological BS!
from the National Geographic report of the study:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this->"Most of the men best remembered headless photographs of women in bikinis, even if they'd only seen the image for two-tenths of a second."
from the Daily Princetonian report:
->“We predicted these results — that there would be activation in the tool-use part of brain [when the men viewed half-naked women] — before the study,” Fiske said. “I remember Jennifer [Eberhardt] suggested it first about a year ago, and I said, ‘Oh, Jennifer, that’s disgusting. I can’t believe you’re predicting that.’ ”
If there're no faces in the pictures and the subjects are tested on what they remembered.....then what are they remembering? - the colour of the bathing suit? a wrist watch? sandles?....in otherwords - objects(their brain scans may show this).
If there is a face shown, a relatively large amount of mental power is used to process it - it's automatic to attempt to interpret the expression and emotions on the face - hence, when asked if they remembered what type of sandels were in the picture, there'd be a far lower rate of recall.
This is study was less about science than it was about gender politics and social engineering (can't forget splashy headlines and funding either).
If women are supposed to guess the (spiritual) intentions of photographed people and are unable to identify a photo as an object without any intention, a so-called 'thing" like a screwdriver, a god or a cloud are things, they are a lot more stupid than I ever did believe and still avoid to believe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA photograph is a thing. You can do something with it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA woman or a girl is a person and you can also do something with her, but unlike a thing, a person has intentions that matter and things have not. If women don't understand that difference between things and persons, like male persons do, they have to be guarded in closed boxes.
This is MIS-INFORMATION.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's not even a correlation, let alone a conclusion.
This writer should be fired. Where is the real document?
Please note: this podcast is longer than the usual one minute as it includes quotes from the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf all the men in this world lose their interests to women's body, that'll be the biggest tragedy of all the humanbeings, that means the doomsday is coming. No more offsprings~
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll I can say is that as a woman I do feel that society holds a certain conduct for women , that in today's society we are classified no more than to be "sex objects". If you watch any channel on television it's the women who have no self respect, self value, etc that everyone is watching. I am not saying that having an intimate relationship with someone is bad I just feel that women who have self respect and chose not to flaunt themselves for everyone's attention do not get the recognition they should.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll I Can say is that it is obvious that society portrays women as nothing more than sex objects. The women who deserve recognition for having self respect and dignity are not the women who are glorified on television. It is the rather promiscuous women that everyone wants to see because why? our society is shallow. I believe a woman can have sex appeal but yet be a respectable woman look at Tyra Banks for example she chooses not to pose for Playboy while she has had many offers, but yet she is still a very sexy yet classy woman. I feel that women today who choose to not be promiscuous are not recognized in today's society. I am not saying that having a sexual relationship with someone is a negative thing I feel that having sex with multiple people is degrading to ones self worth and that unfortunately is what catches everyone's attention.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm still surprised that people are surprised by a study such as this. Yes, men view women as sex objects. What else is new? You can't change something that has existed for thousands of years (if not longer), and just so happens to be a part of the primitive human brain. Get used to it. Women like men's behavior. Men like women's looks. Not gonna change anytime soon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI got it! (great idea for another monogrammed T-shirt:)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"No Porn.
No sex...
Now what?"
I can imagine that this does seem like a foregone conclusion for anyone who has not experienced it in real life. As a woman who has, I could not understand what happens when a certain man was aroused and treated me like a sex object instead of the whole person I am. This was his problem not mine but in seeking further understanding, this article helped me to see how the brain works in making this possible and even probable for some men.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this