It lays out the researchers side pretty well.

The experimental/causal research on males actually shows that for high status jobs, male appearance is less important than female appearance for getting jobs. But you might be right that once they have the job, male attractivemess is a great thing to have (certainly being hideous wouldnt help).

Comparing men to women here though, is very difficult. Even if a male is being focused on for that reason, they arent as valued for their appearance, or at least, it isn’t as central to how people feel/think about them. So in a sense, if males were truly objectified in the sense males are, they probably would have the same negative consequences. But in very few cases does that actually occur.

I am not a Palin supporter by any stretch, but I still find it very sad that she faces obstacles that males do not.

Wait….did we just agree? Scary. (kidding)

Wow, what a difference in calmness/rationality/reasoning/fairness between your original article and your comments to my comments. Amazing.

I wholly agree that it is very hard in a lot of cases to discern good, solid science from people trying to prove points that use science to justify their stance. I assue you though, that in the case of Jamie and Nathan, there is no way they slanted the data. As someone close to both of them (a USF psychologist), I have worked closely with them since Nathan entered the program to work with Jamie 3 years ago.

I am not saying that other people don’t slant data. But a key difference here, besides the fact that it is them, is that the study wasn’t designed to even include poltical variables. That was way down on the list. As the authors have said repeatedly, the primary focus was to test how women are percieved by others when being judged solely(mostly/more) on their appearance before being rated on competence/humanity.

I know it might seem hard to fathom why they included Palin if it wasn’t political motivation. I am not entirely sure, but the study design required writing about Palin’s personality (or Jolie’s) for 25% of the population. They needed to have females people knew enough about to do this. And again, I dont know why they didnt choose a less attractive female also. But sheesh, you can’t do everything at once. They are, however, planning a follow up with various levels of attractive women.

Re the data being proven wrong, that is pretty much impossible unless someone can get access to their data and demonstrate that they did not perform fair science (e.g., skewed the numbers etc). Further, the results of this study are based on past work ( that has also been based on work prior to that) all support similar conclusions based on their data. It is impossible for all of this research (done for years) that is similar to Heflick and Goldenberg’s to be part of some political conspiracy when NONE of the previous empirical work in this area looked at politics (let alone Palin).

In the field of experimental social psychology (Goldenberg and Heflick’s) any work is reviewed by several reviewers and an editor in the field who have expert knowledge on past research and methodology and statistics. These reviewers and editor do not accept most studies (the rejection rate for JESP is pretty high, so even good work gets rejected). And even when they do, the authors have to address a laundry list of concerns the editor/reviewers have and work in their suggestions. If they dont do this adequately, they are still rejected by the journal.

In closing, the study has sad findings. Politics aside, it is disheartening for Palin or any woman to be percieved more negatively because people are focusing so highly on her appearance. This is a hindrance to Palin and all women, and this realization, and the understanding of it, was the authors primary reason for the study. This sad fact is, unfortunately, getting lost in a heap of political crossfire that has nothing to do with the study’s findings.

Maybe Palin will one day be President. The authors would never say that their findings eliminate this possibly. However, the fact that she is a woman who gets a lot of attention for her appearance, coupled with the study’s findings, suggest that, sadly, their will be forces outside of her control (objectification) working against her. So of course, she could still win, just like anyone can overcome hindrances to being voted for. It is only one factor. People overcome hindrances all of the time, but that doesn’t mean they still do not have an influence.

In the actual article, they outline what they mean by “human essence,” how it is measured and past research on the concept. It can be roughly (and I mean roughly) translated as the opposite of dehumanization, but it has to do with specifically seeing someone as more human relative to robotic or automatic (e..g, an object). This distinction between the other form of dehumanization (or infrahumanization as it is called because it differs from dehumanization) was noted by Nick Haslam, and is in contrast to the other form of infrashumanization, which is viewing humans as more animalistic and less human (such as when calling enemy soldiers “snakes” and “beasts.”

I can’t believe I am spending so much time replying to this.