Abstract
Using a between-participants experimental paradigm, the present study investigated U.S. adolescent boys’ (n = 96) and college men’s (n = 194) attitudes toward media images of male athletes as well as their thoughts about the athletes. Participants viewed either sexualized (i.e., skin exposed, sexual pose) or performance (i.e., in uniform and in action poses on the field/court) images of male athletes. They then rated the athletes’ competence, esteem, and sexual appeal and completed a writing task about their reactions to the images. Male viewers rated the sexualized athletes lower in competence and esteem and higher in sexual appeal compared to the performance athletes. These results have implications for advocacy efforts calling for less sexualization in today’s media environment.
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Participants were not informed in the consent process that aggregated data would be shared; therefore, data are not available to interested researchers. However, the authors will provide data to Sex Roles for data verification purposes. Photos used as experimental stimuli can be obtained by contacting the first author. The authors do not have copyrights to them and, therefore, cannot publish them.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Ashli Hatfield for her invaluable work on this project, including her help with the experimental stimuli and data collection. We also thank Trudy Roberts and Angela Kettle for their careful work coding the open-ended data and Heather Williquette for her help developing the coding scheme. An earlier version of this project was presented at the Appearance Matters 8 conference in 2018 in Bath, England.
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The study was supported by internal funding from Linfield University to the second author.
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Both authors contributed to the study’s conception and design. Both authors engaged in the data collection. The first author performed the data analysis and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. Both authors commented substantively on subsequent drafts of the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Daniels, E.A., Linder, J.R. Sex Object vs. Athlete: Boys’ and Men’s Responses Toward Sexualized Male Athletes. Sex Roles 85, 528–541 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-021-01228-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-021-01228-3