Greater income inequality and worries about social standing may encourage both women and men to base more of their personal worth on appearance, according to two experiments published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
Self-objectification refers to viewing and evaluating oneself primarily through physical appearance, almost as if observing one’s body from another person’s perspective. Previous research has linked this with body shame, appearance anxiety, depression and eating disorders.
Traditional explanations have focused largely on women being routinely judged according to their attractiveness in societies characterized by unequal gender relations. However, self-objectification is also increasingly recognized among men. The researchers proposed that wider economic conditions might provide another explanation: when differences between rich and poor become highly visible, people may become more concerned about social rank and use their appearance to demonstrate value or success.
Led by Khandis Blake of the University of Melbourne, the researchers conducted two online experiments involving a combined final sample of 1,458 people. Participants entered a fictional society called Bimboola and were shown how income was distributed among its residents. Everyone was placed in the middle-income group, but the difference between Bimboola’s richest and poorest residents varied between participants.
In the first experiment, the final sample included 468 university students (339 females, average age of 20.86 years). After viewing one of 10 different income distributions, participants selected a house, car, phone and holiday consistent with their assigned income. They then answered questions about their concerns regarding appearance, wealth, education, career, parenting and life achievements, as well as how strongly they were currently judging themselves through appearance.
Participants exposed to greater inequality reported more self-objectification. Inequality also increased anxiety about material wealth, career success, education and life achievements. Notably, however, inequality did not increase anxiety about appearance itself, suggesting that people in unequal environments self-objectify not because they are worried about how they look, but because they are worried about their socioeconomic standing. Concerns about material wealth, career success, education and life achievements each partly explained the association between inequality and self-objectification. However, because this was a statistical explanation rather than direct proof of the underlying process, the researchers conducted a second experiment.
The second experiment included 990 participants (581 females, average age of 24.84 years). In addition to experiencing different levels of inequality, participants imagined either achieving career success, becoming successful through their appearance on social media, or experiencing neither form of success.
Income inequality again increased self-objectification, but the type of success participants experienced had a considerably larger effect. Career success reduced self-objectification relative to the control condition. By contrast, appearance success increased it substantially, even though participants became more confident about their attractiveness. Interestingly, manipulating status concerns did not weaken the effect of inequality itself, suggesting that inequality and status concerns may operate as independent routes to self-objectification rather than one working strictly through the other.
Appearance success also made participants feel more successful in unrelated areas, reducing concerns about wealth and overall life achievements. This may help explain why appearance-based status seeking remains appealing: looking successful can create a wider sense of social standing. However, it also increased anxiety about education and parenting. Career success reduced concerns across more areas, including wealth, education and life achievements—although it, too, increased anxiety about parenting—making it the more broadly beneficial status pathway overall.
The findings were strikingly similar for men and women. As the researchers concluded, “Recognising that status concerns fuel and sustain self-objectification for both men and women helps explain its persistence despite weakening patriarchal norms.”
Several caveats remain. For example, Bimboola was fictional, and short-term reactions to an imagined economy may differ from living with inequality over many years.
The study, “Income inequality and status concerns in multiple life domains increase self-objectification for both women and men,” was authored by Khandis Blake, Marta Kowal, Brock Bastian, Jacob Kuek, Auguste Harrington, Sylvia Harmon-Jones and Robert C. Brooks.