Women on display: The effect of portraying the self online on women’s self-objectification

Objectification research has largely ignored the potential impact of Internet activities, such as online self-portrayal, on women’s self-objectification and whether this may interact with traditional sexually objectifying stimuli. In response to these research gaps, the present study had two goals: first, to investigate if portraying the self to others online leads to self-objectification in women; second, to test whether priming with sexually objectifying content from traditional media moderates the effect of online self-portrayal on self-objectification. We conducted an online experiment with a two (priming stimuli: objectifying vs. neutral) by two (audience: online audience vs. no audience) between subjects design among 221 women aged 18–25. All participants created an online profile, which consisted of choosing an avatar and writing a self-description. As expected, participants in the online audience condition self-objectified more strongly than did participants in the no audience condition. However, this effect only held among those who had been primed with sexually objectifying stimuli. Our results suggest that women’s online self-portrayal, if combined with sexually objectifying stimuli, may lead to self-objectification.

► We focus on the effects of generating content on social network sites. ► We investigate if online self-portrayal leads to self-objectification. ► We test if priming with objectifying media content moderates this effect. ► Portraying the self to an online audience caused self-objectification in women. ► This effect only occurred after priming with objectifying media.