27 March 2009

Muslim women often speak of feeling protected and respected when they wear the hijab (religiously mandated modest dress that covers the shape of the body and includes the headscarf or veil). Now there may also be evidence to show that their feelings are rooted in scientific fact, IslamOnline writes.

When psychologist Susan Fiske and a team of researchers at Princeton University performed MRI brain scans on heterosexual men who viewed a series of images showing both scantily clad and fully clothed men and women, they found that the men had an unmistakable response to women wearing less clothing.

The less they wore, the more likely it was for the premotor cortex and the posterior middle temporal gyrus to light up. These are the areas of the brain associated with tool use, hand manipulation, and the urge to take action.

"It was as if they immediately thought about how they might act on these bodies," Fiske explained during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science which was held in Chicago, February 12-16. "They are reacting to these photographs as people react to objects," she said.

Memory tests performed on the men showed that most of them best remembered photographs of headless women in bikinis despite viewing each image for only a fraction of a second. (Landau)

According to a lay summary of Fiske's study provided to IslamOnline.net, when a man's mentalizing network shuts down, this means he views sexualized women as "less human."

This type of dehumanization is something Fiske says has rarely been observed in the laboratory setting-only "once before," according to a recent National Geographic article, which cited a study in which people were shown "off-putting photographs of homeless people and drug addicts."

In the case of scantily clad women, however, men do not demonstrate the same feelings of avoidance as they do with populations like the homeless, which are often shunned by society. Instead, they wish to act on them as one would "push," "handle," or "grab" an object-first-person action verbs that men associated with the images of women in swimsuits.

In addition, men associated the images of women who were more fully clothed with third-person verbs, such as "she pushes," "she handles," and "she grabs," which, according to Fiske, implies that men view fully-clothed women as having more command over their own actions and not as objects to be manipulated.

According to Fiske, the results of the study have important implications for women, especially in the workplace as it has previously been shown that viewing sexualized images of women can affect how men perceive women and interact with them afterwards.

A sexism study conducted by Lawrence University professor, Peter Glick, also found that professional women who wear provocative attire in the workplace are perceived by their co-workers as being less competent and less intelligent, especially when they are in positions of power. According to DiversityJobs.com, Glick's study suggests that "women in higher level and high power jobs may need to dress more modestly and conservatively to win the respect of their colleagues."

"You have to be aware of the effect of these images on people," Fiske said. "They're not neutral. They do have an effect on how people think about other women."