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Link between objectification of girls and aggression to them

There is a direct relation between the sexual objectification of girls and aggression towards them, a University of Kent has shown.

The study, which looked at youth members of gangs as well as those with no gang affiliation, provides the first evidence of a link between objectification and non-sexual aggression in young people.

Dr Eduardo Vasquez and colleagues at the university's School of Psychology, together with a former student, found that higher levels of objectification were significant predictors of aggression towards girls.

Their findings are consistent with the claim that, among other negative outcomes, the perception of women as nothing but sexual objects also evokes aggression against them. The research also established that watching television and playing violent video games were positively correlated with both sexual objectification and aggression towards girls.

The study featured 273 participants aged 12 to 16 years old from a secondary school in London. The school is located in an area experiencing problems with gangs and delinquency.

The findings showed that the objectification-aggression link manifests itself at least as early as the teenage years, leading to the suggestion that the detrimental effects of perceiving females as objects begin at an early stage of development.

This, in turn, has the potential to be further reinforced and strengthened over a number of years, suggest the researchers, thereby becoming 'more robust and difficult to change'.

The study also suggests that the factors that might allow objectification to influence children – such as violent video games or sexist media – poses a potentially serious risk of increasing anti-social acts towards girls.

Abstract
Sexual objectification is related to various negative attitudes and outcomes, including rape proclivity and reduced moral concern for the objectified, which suggests that objectification has implications for aggression. Our study examined the relationship between objectification and general aggressive behaviour in adolescents, including gang-affiliated youth. We hypothesized that (1) objectification would correlate with aggression towards girls, (2) gang affiliation would correlate with objectification and aggression towards girls, and (3) objectification and gang affiliation would interact such that strongly affiliated participants who objectified girls would be most aggressive towards them. We also hypothesized that sexual objectification would be a significant predictor of aggression above and beyond other factors, such as trait aggression. As predicted, objectification correlated with aggression towards girls and with gang affiliation, which also correlated with aggression. In addition, objectification predicted aggression towards girls, after controlling for other relevant factors. Further, we found an objectification × gang affiliation interaction, which differed from our original predictions. Among participants low in gang affiliation, objectification of girls predicted levels of aggression towards them. Among those high in gang affiliation, however, objectification did not predict aggression. We discussed the implications of our findings for general aggression.

Authors
Eduardo A Vasquez, Kolawole Osinnowo, Afroditi Pina, Louisa Ball, Cheyra Bell

[link url="https://www.kent.ac.uk/news/society/12377/link-between-sexual-objectification-and-aggression"]University of Kent material[/link]
[link url="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1068316X.2016.1269902"]Psychology, Crime & Law abstract[/link]

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