Exposure to Sexualized Pictures Primes Occupational Stereotypes

Gender stereotypes in advertisements, magazines, or videogames often appear in the form of sexualized portrayals of women characterized by inappropriately foregrounding female sexuality. Women are shown with highly revealing clothing and engaging in seductive acts. Sexualization may serve as a motivator to adopt congruent gender-related stereotypes in the viewers and, thus, influence beliefs about women in the real world, including negative effects on self-efficacy of women (Behm-Morawitz & Mastro, 2009).
In two studies, sexualization had similar adverse effects on participants’ spontaneous judgments of occupational stereotypes and job classification. In a field study (Study 1, N=128), sexualized female game characters were spontaneously associated with jobs of lower prestige (e.g., hairdresser). In contrast, non-sexualized portrayals were linked to jobs of higher status (i.e., physician, educator). This detrimental effect of sexualized portrayal on occupational status was replicated for depictions of male and female fashion models in an online survey (Study 2, N=459). Moreover, this effect was partially mediated by ratings of lower perceived competence for sexualized portrayals of both men and women.
The findings of the present studies extend the multifaceted negative effects of sexualization on stereotyping by showing that the resulting spontaneous competence judgments may have detrimental job-related consequences.