The Use of Dress in Objectification Research

Abstract

To objectify another person is to dehumanize and treat that person as an object. Objectification has interested dress scholars, and some objectification scholars have acknowledged that clothing and bodies act to facilitate or resist objectification. Research purposes were to determine the extent to which dress had been used to evoke objectification in experiments when objectification was an outcome and to determine whether internal validity had been correctly established. Experimental objectification research was content analyzed using descriptive statistics. A database search resulted in 80 refereed empirical research articles containing 91 experiments. Dress was used to evoke objectification in 57 experiments; yet, many provided no rationale for using dress stimuli or conducted manipulation checks or stimulus pretests. These practices call into question the validity of research results and may explain inconsistent results. Opportunities for dress scholars and recommendations for teaching and for research best practices are offered.