Self Objectification

The purpose of this study was to determine how self-objectification and mortality salience affected the reaction of women when presented objectifying images. Goldenberg, Cooper, Heflick, Routledge, and Arndt (2011) base their research mainly on the terror management theory which claims that people feel the need to validate their own identities when made aware of death (pp. 444). They hypothesize that women who highly objectify themselves, or highly value their appearances, are more favorable of objectifying images when faced with mortality salience compared to women who are less objectifying of themselves. To support their hypothesis, Goldenberg et al. conducts two studies which observed the effect of self-objectification and self-esteem on the reaction to objectifying images when primed with death. While this article provides sufficient information, it has weaknesses in the sample selection, experimental …show more content…
Goldenberg et al. (2011) assessed the reactions to the magazine covers featuring an objectified woman with questions like, “How much did you like the magazine cover?”, “Did you find it tastefully done?”, and “Did you find it offensive?” (pp. 445). Helgeson (2012) explains how experimenters can influence the results of an experiment, a phenomena known as experimenter effects. In particular, the nature of the question may affect the outcome of the study. By asking a participant specifically how much they liked the image, they are restricted to only thinking about what they liked about it as opposed to how it actually made them feel. An aspect in conducting feminist research is the importance of qualitative interviewing (DeVault & Gross, 2012). A more qualitative research method could have been more effective, focusing on questions geared more toward how the images made the participant feel rather than how much it made them feel a specific