Doris G. Bazzini

The Aging Woman in Popular Film: Underrepresented, Unattractive, Unfriendly, and Unintelligent

The present study examined 100 top-grossing motion pictures spanning from the 1940s through the 1980s (20 movies from each decade). Eight hundred and twenty-nine characters were rated on attractiveness, character goodness, intelligence, friendliness, socioeconomic status, romantic activity, and movie outcome. It was hypothesized that ageist and sexist stereotypes would interact such that (a) older female characters would be more underrepresented, and (b) more negatively portrayed, than their male contemporaries. Both hypotheses were supported. Implications regarding double standards for age, and the media’s propagation of beauty-related standards for females were discussed.

Who smokes in hollywood? characteristics of smokers in popular films from 1940 to 1989

We examined how smokers were depicted in 100 popular films spanning 5 decades. Smokers were depicted as more romantically and sexually active than nonsmokers and as marginally more intelligent than nonsmokers. Smokers and nonsmokers did not differ in terms of attractiveness, goodness, socioeconomic status, aggression, friendliness, or outcome at films end. Thus, if anything, smokers are depicted a bit more positively than nonsmokers. We compared Hollywoods depiction of smokers to real-world demographics on smoking and found that Hollywoods depiction of smoking tends to ignore the negative consequences and correlates (e.g., ill health, low socioeconomic status, aggressive behavior) of smoking.

Gender, Sexual Experience, and the Sexual Double Standard: Evaluations of Female Contraceptive Behavior

The purpose of the present research was to compare mens and womens perceptions of female contraceptive behavior and investigate the relationship between sexual experience and these perceptions. One hundred forty-six predominantly Caucasion males (n = 76) and females (n = 70) were randomly assigned to one of three sexual scenarios in which a male provided the condom in a sexual encounter, a female provided the condom, or no condom was used. They were then asked to rate the female on several behavioral and personality measures and to complete a sexual experience scale. Results showed differences in the way men and women perceived the female target. A positive correlation was also found between sexual experience and more favorable perceptions of the sexually-prepared female.

Resisting Temptation Revisited: Devaluation Versus Enhancement of an Attractive Suitor by Exclusive and Nonexclusive Daters

Individuals committed to exclusive relationships often evaluate attractive, opposite-sex targets less favorably than do less committed individuals. This devaluative distortion of alternatives has been interpreted as relationship maintenance by exclusive daters. Two experiments evaluated an alternative hypothesis: Less committed individuals may more favorably evaluate attractive, other-sex targets because they are seeking a relationship. In Experiment 1, exclusive and nonexclusive daters imagined a scenario in which an attractive stranger showed interest in the participant (high threat/high opportunity) or in his or her best friend (low threat/low opportunity). In Experiment 2, exclusive and nonexclusive daters anticipated interacting with an attractive target who was either available/seeking a relationship (high threat/high opportunity) or unavailable for a relationship (low threat/low opportunity). As predicted, nonexclusive daters evaluated available targets more favorably than unavailable ones, showing clear evidence of relationship-seeking motives. However, exclusive daters showed little evidence of devaluing available targets in the interest of relationship maintenance.

Empowerment, feminism, and self-efficacy: Relationships to body image and disordered eating

Sociocultural norms pertaining to an ideal of thinness for women likely play a role in the development and maintenance of disturbance in body image, and by extension, disordered eating. However, competing norms associated with feminism may buffer women from pressures associated with achieving the thin ideal. The present study explored the relationship between feminist ideology, empowerment, and self-efficacy relative to body image and eating behavior with a sample of U.S. undergraduate women (N=318) attending a southeastern U.S. mid-sized university. In planned hierarchical multiple regression analyses, endorsement of feminist ideology predicted perceptions of positive body image, but did not appear to predict disordered eating. Self-efficacy emerged as a robust predictor of positive body image and lower disordered eating even after controlling for perceptions of personal empowerment and feminism. Results, although limited by correlational data, suggest that self-efficacy may protect college-aged women from disordered eating and negative body image.

Investigating the Social-Adjustive and Value-Expressive Functions of Well-Grounded Attitudes: Implications for Change and for Subsequent Behavior

Recent demonstrations of the plausibility of functional theories of persuasion have occurred within advertising contexts or have targeted potentially nebulous or uninvolving attitudes, and may thus have demonstrated the utility of functional explanations of attitude formation rather than attitude change. In the present study, attitudes that participants have acted on and consider important (i.e., the criteria they use to select dating partners) were the targets of persuasion. High and low self-monitoring individuals, who hold different dating attitudes that serve different functions, were exposed to functionally relevant or functionally irrelevant messages that reached either proattitudinal or counterattitudinal conclusions. As anticipated by functional theory, (a) low self-monitoring individuals changed their dating attitudes only after hearing a counterattitudinal message that addressed thevalue-expressive functions their dating attitudes served, whereas (b) high self-monitoring individuals changed their opinions only after hearing a counterattitudinal message that addressed thesocial-adjustive functions served by their dating attitudes. Although the data revealed that important attitudes can be changed via a functionally relevant appeal, only the low self-monitoring individuals subsequently used their changed attitudes to guide their behavior in a subsequent couple-matching task. Implications of these results for functional theories of persuasion and for variations in attitude/behavior consistency were discussed.

Body Image and “Fat Talk”

Fat talk is a conversational style whereby girls and women say negative things about their bodies, such as, “I’m so fat,” to other females for presumed social functions. Recent empirical investigations show women and men in the United States recognize fat talk as normative, and clear gender differences exist whereby women report more exposure to fat talk and more pressure to engage in it than men. However, women report less personal adherence to these norms compared to their perception of ‘other women’. There is limited empirical support showing positive functions of fat talk for adults, and most studies show its association with pathological constructs such as poor body image and disordered eating behaviors.

Empathic understanding: Benefits of perspective-taking and facial mimicry instructions are mediated by self-other overlap

The current study sought to better understand the utility of two strategies—perspective-taking and facial mimicry—proposed to increase empathic responding. Thirty-seven female participants were presented an interpersonal situation (a betrayal) that would elicit the use of empathic responding to achieve conflict resolution between friends. Each participant was given instructions to partake in either perspective-taking, facial mimicry, or to remain neutral (control condition). The results demonstrated that individuals who engaged in perspective-taking reported significantly higher state empathy than the control condition, but there was no significant difference in state empathy between the mimicry and control condition. Also, those who engaged in either strategy reported significantly higher self-other overlap relative to those not instructed to engage in a particular strategy. Importantly, self-other overlap mediated the association between the instructional sets and state empathy. Both strategies are arguably means of enhancing interpersonal understanding.