OK, OK, the headline is a joke, but there\u2019s a serious point behind it that I think those of us who value true purity as opposed to cheap knockoffs need to reckon with.\u00a0 This past Summer I\u2019ve been reading a lot\u00a0about the 2009 Princeton study that, according to some sources<\/a>, found that men can\u2019t help <\/a>but view women in bikinis<\/a> as objects instead of persons.\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n I hadn\u2019t had time to read the study before now, \u00a0but I finally got around to it this past weekend and I have to say that the study really doesn\u2019t appear to say what people are claiming it does.<\/p>\n What The Study Actually Says<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The original study was titled, From agents to objects: sexist attitudes and neural responses to sexualized targets.<\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0I have the full study in front of me, but the link goes behind an academic library firewall so I can\u2019t\u00a0post it here.\u00a0 The abstract is, however, in the public domain so I\u2019m posting it\u00a0in italics below.\u00a0 (Don\u2019t get freaked out by the academic language.\u00a0 In fact, feel free to skip it if you like.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty murky stuff.\u00a0 I\u2019ll walk you though it, but since the post has the potential to be a bit controversial, I wanted to be sure to show my math. Also, I am taking the liberty of highlighting the most relevant passages for easier understanding of the results).<\/p>\n ABSTRACT:\u00a0 Agency attribution is a hallmark of mind perception; thus, diminished attributions of agency may disrupt social-cognition processes typically elicited by human targets. The current studies examine the effect of perceivers\u2019 sexist attitudes on associations of agency with, and neural responses to, images of sexualized and clothed men and women<\/strong>. In Study 1, male (but not female) participants with higher hostile sexism scores more quickly associated sexualized women with first-person action verbs (\u201chandle\u201d)<\/strong><\/em> and clothed women with third-person action verbs (\u201chandles\u201d) than the inverse, as compared to their less sexist peers. In Study 2,<\/strong> hostile sexism correlated negatively with activation of regions associated with mental state attribution<\/strong>-medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate, temporal poles-but only when viewing sexualized women.<\/strong> Heterosexual men best recognized images of sexualized female bodies (but not faces), as compared with other targets\u2019 bodies; however, neither face nor body recognition was related to hostile sexism, suggesting that the fMRI findings are not explained by more or less attention to sexualized female targets.<\/strong> Diminished mental state attribution is not unique to targets that people prefer to avoid, as in dehumanization of stigmatized people. The current studies demonstrate that appetitive social targets may elicit a similar response depending on perceivers\u2019 attitudes toward them.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Clear as mud, right?<\/p>\n Basically, what all this means is that the study sets out to determine not<\/strong> how the way women dress affects men<\/em>, but how people who exhibit views consistent with \u201chostile sexism\u201d vs. \u201cbenevolent sexism\u201d view women who are dressed in different ways.\u00a0 In other words, the study did not<\/em> attempt to\u00a0examine whether bikinis caused men to view women as objects.\u00a0\u00a0Rather, it\u00a0asked what sort of men<\/em> are most inclined to look at women as objects, especially if they were wearing something like a bikini.\u00a0 Would all men objectify women who were dressed more provocatively?\u00a0 Or would only men who exhibited either benevolent sexist attitudes or hostile sexist attitudes\u00a0 be more likely to view the provocatively dressed women as objects?<\/p>\n Internal Control Fallacy is Intact<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n If the study actually set out to determine whether bikinis caused\u00a0men to view women as objects, the researchers would have an uphill battle in front of them.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s\u00a0because there are decades and decades of research demonstrating that the idea that one person can be directly responsible for another\u2019s emotional reactions is patently false.\u00a0 This idea \u2013 that one person\u2019s behavior causes another person\u2019s feelings \u2013 is called the \u201cinternal control fallacy<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 (see #7 here<\/a>).\u00a0 The internal control fallacy<\/em> figures prominently in abusive and codependent relationships especially, where the abused person believes that if she could just figure out the \u201cright\u201d way to act, she could get her abuser to stop treating her cruelly or thinking of her poorly.\u00a0 Many\u00a0well-meaning people in the\u00a0Church unfortunately\u00a0buy into this myth, believing that, depending upon\u00a0how they dress, women cause<\/em> men to feel a certain way.\u00a0\u00a0This\u00a0is simply another manifestation of the internal control fallacy which has been shown, again, by decades of\u00a0data, to be\u00a0a\u00a0false and unhealthy belief that tends to undermine emotional and relational health.\u00a0 \u00a0 If the study was actually trying to overturn such an established principle as the internal control fallacy<\/em> as it relates to fashion and lust it would have caused quite a stir.\u00a0 The fact that it attempted no such thing makes much more sense.<\/p>\n Hostile\u00a0vs.\u00a0 Benevolent Sexism.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Again, what the study actually\u00a0examined was\u00a0how men with\u00a0\u201chostile\u201d versus \u201cbenevolent\u201d sexist attitudes viewed women, especially women dressed in a more revealing manner. According to the study, men who exhibit\u201dhostile\u201d sexist attitudes tend to\u00a0 \u201cstrongly agree\u201d with statements such as \u201cOnce a woman gets a man to commit to her, she usually tries to put him on a tight leash.\u201d\u00a0<\/em> By contrast, men who exhibit \u201cbenevolent\u201d sexist attitudes tend to \u201cstrongly agree\u201d with statements on\u00a0a survey such as \u201cA good woman should be set on a pedestal by her man\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n What the study found was that, when exposed to pictures of women in bikinis, men who scored high in hostile sexist attitudes<\/em> (as opposed to the other men in the study) tended to view women as objects both cognitively and neurologically<\/em>.\u00a0 Cognitively, men who had high levels of hostile sexism tended, on a word association test, to have a preference for 1st person words indicating use<\/em> instead of agency<\/em> (e.g., words like \u201cuse\u201d instead of \u201cuses\u201d, \u201cpush\u201d instead of \u201cpushes\u201d\u00a0 etc.).\u00a0 The researches assert that this preference for these particular words indicates\u00a0a tendency to objectify\u00a0women dressed in a more revealing way.\u00a0 Some people might say that\u2019s a bit of a stretch but there is\u00a0justification in the literature for this assertion.\u00a0 Likewise, neurologically, men who exhibit high levels of hostile sexism also exhibit low levels of activity in the part of the brain responsible for empathy and higher levels of activity in the part of the brain responsible for manipulating objects (as determined by fMRI).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This offers a pretty strong case from both cognitive science and neuroscience that men who exhibit hostile sexist attitudes will be more likely to objectify women who are more provocatively dressed.<\/p>\n Results: Good Men Do Not Objectify Women No Matter How They Are Dressed<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Interestingly though, the study also found that men who<\/em> were not<\/strong> hostile sexists or<\/em> exhibited attitudes consistent with benevolent<\/em> sexism, did not<\/strong> objectify the women dressed in a more revealing manner.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 This finding actually is directly contrary to the assertion of the religious promoters of this study who imply or directly state that bikini-clad women cause all men to view them as objects.\u00a0 This assertion is not supported by the data.\u00a0 Only men with hostile sexist attitudes toward women<\/em> viewed provocatively dressed women as objects.\u00a0\u00a0 Men who were not sexist or who had benevolent sexist attitudes did not objectify women dressed in a more revealing fashion\u00a0and, in fact, did not view the bikini images any differently than women participants in the study!<\/em><\/p>\n So, here are the actual take-aways from this study.<\/em><\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 Bikini\u2019s do not cause<\/em> men to lust.\u00a0 This was not even the focus of this study but if it was, decades of data refute this idea which is founded upon the internal control fallacy.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 Only men who are hostile toward women in the first place\u00a0tended to view women\u00a0as objects when they were dressed in a more revealing manner.\u00a0 By contrast, men who had benevolent attitudes toward women did not<\/em> display\u00a0either\u00a0cognitive or neurological signs of objectifying bikini-clad women.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 Men who are hostile sexists do a better job hiding their pre-existing negative attitudes around women who dress more conservatively.<\/p>\n All this leads to my tongue-in-cheek title\u00a0for\u00a0this post.\u00a0 There is\u00a0real potential danger in the\u00a0finding that men\u00a0with pre-existing hostile sexist attitudes do not as\u00a0readily display these attitudes around more conservatively dressed women.\u00a0\u00a0 It could be argued, based solely on the findings of this study, that women who only dress conservatively are more likely be\u00a0fooled into marrying men who actually\u00a0see them as objects, but\u00a0who don\u2019t overtly display these attitudes\u00a0until the relationship becomes sexual\u00a0after \u00a0marriage.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0After marriage this otherwise conservative\u00a0woman\u00a0suddenly becomes sexualized in the hostile sexist\u2019s mind.\u00a0 His hostile sexism\u2013which was\u00a0only lurking\u00a0around the corners before\u2013\u00a0now presents front and center much to the surprise and chagrin\u00a0of the\u00a0woman.\u00a0\u00a0Come to think\u00a0of it, I\u00a0actually have clients who have fallen into exactly this trap.<\/p>\n By contrast,\u00a0a different woman who was more comfortable with the idea of wearing a bikini at the beach in front of her boyfriend might actually\u00a0be more likely to experience her boyfriend\u2019s hostile sexist attitudes\u2013if he had any\u2013before<\/em> she marries him and thus, be able to dump him before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n Let me be clear\u2026.I am NOT seriously suggesting that women should dress provocatively to weed out potentially abusive partners.\u00a0 That would be stupid.<\/strong><\/p>\n But\u00a0as ridiculous as it would be to assert this idea, the above\u00a0would be a more logical conclusion\u2013based solely on the data presented in this study\u2013than\u00a0the conclusion many have drawn from it.\u00a0\u00a0Holding up this study\u00a0to support the spurious idea that women cause men to lust by what they wear is completely inappropriate because this study does not, in fact, say anything like that at all.\u00a0 In fact, it says the opposite because the benevolent sexists in the study (as opposed to the hostile sexists) didn\u2019t actually objectify the women in bikinis.\u00a0 It was the viewers attitudes that determined objectification, not the way the women were dressed.<\/p>\n In a word, the study shows that bad men objectify women and good men don\u2019t\u2013regardless of what they\u2019re wearing.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/em><\/strong>The other day, I posted a link to a terrific article about an imagined conversation between a father and his son. It really struck a cord with many readers.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to close this reflection with an excerpt from that piece by Nate Pyle.<\/p>\n There are two views regarding a woman\u2019s dress code that you will be pressured to buy into. \u00a0One view will say that women need to dress to get the attention of men. \u00a0The other view will say women need to dress to protect men from themselves. \u00a0Son, you are better than both of these. \u00a0A woman, or any human being, should not have to dress to get your attention. \u00a0You should give them the full attention they deserve simply because they are a fellow human being. \u00a0On the other side, a woman should not have to feel like she needs to protect you from you. \u00a0You need to be in control of you.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Unfortunately, much of how the sexes interact with each is rooted in fear. \u00a0Fear of rejection, fear of abuse, fear of being out of control. \u00a0In some ways, the church has added to this. \u00a0We fear each other because we have been taught the other is dangerous. \u00a0We\u2019ve been a taught a woman\u2019s body will cause men to sin. \u00a0We\u2019re told that if a woman shows too much of her body men will do stupid things. \u00a0Let\u2019s be clear: a woman\u2019s body is not dangerous to you. \u00a0Her body will not cause you harm. \u00a0It will not make you do stupid things. \u00a0If you do stupid things it is because you chose to do stupid things. \u00a0So don\u2019t contribute to the fear that exists between men and women.\u00a0 MORE<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n