Categorização emocional de mulheres objetificadas sexualmente e sua relação com fatores sociocognitivos

Abstract

Gender stereotypes are based on the historical, economic, social and biological construction of the concepts of masculinity and femininity, defining an inferior status for women. A sociocognitive process associated with prejudice is dehumanization which, in the case of women, manifests itself in their sexual objectification and, consequently, in the difficulty of detect their emotions. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate the recognition of emotional expressions in images with women represented in an objectified and non-objectified way, as well as their relation with ambivalent sexism and the Social dominance orientation. For this, thirty-three (33) university students (17 male) with an average age of 22.8 years (SD = 3.36) responded to self-report instruments (Ambivalent Sexism Inventory and reduced version of Social Dominance Orientation Scale – 7) and performed an emotional categorization task of images with objectified and non-objectified women (Sexual Objectification and EMotion image database, SOBEM). The results indicated higher categorization thresholds in the Objectification condition compared to the Non-Objectification condition for the emotion of Happy, however, an opposite pattern was presented for the emotion Anger. For some experimental conditions, positive and significant correlations were also observed between the categorization thresholds and the dimensions of Benevolent Sexism, Dominance and AntiEgalitarianism. These results show the importance of socio-cognitive factors in understanding the objectification and dehumanization of women, which can help in planning actions to reduce various forms of violence and gender inequality.