It’s not Fine Online: Assessing the Emotional Consequences of Online Sexual Objectification and its Effect on Behaviour

With the development of online communication, research is needed to understand the emotional and behavioural consequences of online sexual objectification. Across two studies, we assessed how the emotions that are experienced following sexual objectification online predict how people respond to such actions. Study 1 (N = 512) measured the extent to which people who identified as female would feel a variety of emotions following a sexually objectifying comment on a dating app (i.e., anger, disgust, shame, inferiority, rejection, and pride). This study also assessed their anticipated behavioural responses to this online objectifying action (i.e., active, passive, self-blame, or benign). Study 2 (N = 148) assessed the frequency with which women experience offline and online sexual objectification, as well as their emotional and behavioural responses to online and offline sexual objectification. In both studies, we found that moral outrage emotions (i.e., anger and disgust) positively predicted active responses (e.g., confronting the perpetrator) and that pride positively predicted benign responding. In addition, Study 2 found that the aversive emotions were generally higher for offline than online sexual objectification. Also, people were more likely to self-blame for offline than online sexual objectification. These studies extend previous research assessing the role of emotions in determine the responses to offline sexual objectification in demonstrating that these processes may also occur for online sexual objectification.