Effects of sexually objectifying gaze on women's self-sexualization in a mating context: The tradeoff between safety pursuit and resource pursuit

This research examined the effects of a sexually objectifying gaze from a potential partner on women's self-sexualization in blind dating from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. Across two samples from an urban Chinese university (Study 1: N = 147; Study 2: N = 181), we examined whether a sexually objectifying gaze (vs. control condition) could decrease women's self-sexualization by increasing state safety anxiety. Additionally, we tested whether a potential partner's resource richness could moderate this effect. Results showed that sexually objectifying gaze from the male partner stably triggered participants' state safety anxiety regardless of whether or not the partner had high socio-economic status (Study 1) or high appearance attractiveness (Study 2). However, higher state safety anxiety did not lead to a lower level of self-sexualization when the partner had high socio-economic status (Study 1) or high appearance attractiveness (Study 2), indicating our female participants tended to take both safety and resources into account when making decisions about their sexual attractiveness under the culture of sexual objectification.