Mild electrical shocks to the brain can temporarily change how people see sexualised images of women, reducing a bias linked to treating women as objects, a new study has found.
It also removed the difference in how participants processed such images of men and women. It’s dehumanising and most often experienced by women. “Our findings are initial evidence that the way our visual system processes sexualised images of women can be changed, at least temporarily, by mildly stimulating the brain. This was a lab study – we didn’t measure attitudes or behaviour, and brain stimulation is no cure for sexism – but it gives us a new way to study how objectification works,” he added.
The study, conducted by the University of Exeter, found that applying a mild electrical current to the scalp for 10 minutes helped participants recognise upright images of sexualised women more easily, according to a report by The Independent.
Professor Ciro Civile, who led the study, said, “Sexual objectification means treating a person as a body to be looked at or used, rather than as a whole person.
Participants were shown images of male and female models wearing underwear. The images were shown both upright and upside down. Published in the journal Social Neuroscience, the study involved 76 students, including 54 women and 22 men. Later, they were shown a mix of the same images and new ones and asked to identify the models they had seen earlier. (Also Read: Female AI agents paid 10% less than male counterparts for same work, study finds ) The new study took a different approach by using electrical stimulation to change how the brain processed the images.
