Which Came First: The Objectification Of Sarah Palin, Or The Mistrust In Her Competence?

[LoZoccolo]

A new study, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology reports that when men and women are asked to contemplate the appearance of an attractive woman, they judge her as less competent.

In fact, the experiment was conducted among college studens, who were asked to contemplate either the "personal appearance" or "person" of either Sarah Palin or Angelina Jolie last fall. The authors, psychologists Nathan Heflick and Jamie Goldenberg, hypothesized that by focusing on women's appearances, people perceive them as less "human" and therefore lesser. They found that, indeed, once people focused on Sarah Palin's looks, they judged her to be both less competent and less human.

http://jezebel.com/5164970/which-came-first-the-objectification-of-sarah-palin-or-the-mistrust-in-her-competence?skyline=true&s=x

[notadmblnd]

1. For me it was when she opened her mouth....

......"what is it that the vice president does?"

[Blue_In_AK]

4. Exactly.

I couldn't believe the change in the words coming out of her mouth once she was picked for VP. She was never so hateful before - at least not in public. Now even when she tries to be "nice," we don't believe her.

[Warpy]

5. Exactly, this article neglects the fact that she enjoyed

fairly high approval until her disastrous interview with Couric. Once people saw her fail so miserably at such a softball interview, they clicked her into that "beauty queen airhead" category.

Before she opened her mouth, her looks worked in her favor.

[havocmom]

2. Pretty women probably have more of a burden to be taken seriously

Plain women have it tough just to get noticed at all.

Sarah was well thought of until she started talking and talking and talking. I thing the low opinions most have of her were merit based.

[tammywammy]

3. Recommended n/t

[Genghis]

6. Why does it have to be either/or?

A person can be judged incompetent for both rational (competence) and irrational (sexuality) reasons. Likely, we're all influenced to an extent by both. Thus, we might judge an attractive woman to be less competent than we would if she were male or unattractive, but that doesn't mean that we're unhinged from reality to the point that we would judge any attractive woman to be incompetent.