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 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 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 to 25. All participants created an online profile, which consisted of choosing an avatar and writing a self-description. 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 objectifying stimuli.