Method
Participants
A total of 157 college students participated in the experiment, and the subjects were screened to exclude those who did not answer seriously and those whose answers did not correspond to the real situation, and finally 136 valid subjects were obtained, 42 males and 94 females (Mage=21.72, SDage=2.48). Informed consent was obtained from all participants, and they were free to withdraw from the study at any time. The study was approved by the University Ethics Committee at Southwest University.
Design
Subjects entered the experiment and were randomly assigned to a one-way between-subjects experimental design, with degree of nudity as the between-subjects variable. The three dimensions of interpersonal attraction were measured separately as independent variables.
Materials
Clothing for different levels of nudity
Same as Experiment 1, as shown in Fig.2.
Objectification of others
Measures of humanizing traits were used to capture the degree of objectification of others, with lower perceived humanizing trait scores indicating greater objectification, The use of three entries to directly measure sexual objectification traits (sexy, sexually attractive, and perceived as a sexual object) further supports the idea that dress nudity affects others' objectification of them [26, 27].
Interpersonal attraction
The first three questions with the highest loadings for each dimension in the Interpersonal Attraction Scale developed by McCroskey were selected to form the short version of the Interpersonal Attraction Scale[3], and the Chinese version of the scale has been tested to have good reliability[28]. The wording of the questions was adjusted according to the purpose of the study and the scenario, e.g., in appearance attraction, the original item “I think she is quite nice to look at” was changed to “I think she is quite nice to look at when she dresses like this”.
Procedure
Using online testing, the subjects are required to enter the web site into the experimental interface in a quiet and undisturbed environment, after which they will see the following scenario guide language:
Greetings, this survey was commissioned by a clothing developer to do preliminary market research for the development of clothing with the app. The purpose is to understand the impact of dress on the first impression among the young demographic. Following this, you will encounter a randomly presented image from the developer's image gallery. Kindly provide the most genuine and intuitive evaluation based on your own experiences! Fill in the Interpersonal Attraction Scale after the presentation of the stimulus picture, then fill in the Objectification of Others Scale and the Manipulation Test Questions. Click on the submit button after completing all evaluations.
Results
Tests for each variable
Appearance attraction dimension Cronbach's α = 0.671; task attraction dimension Cronbach's α = 0.852; and social attraction dimension Cronbach's α = 0.810, indicating that the measure of the three dimensions of interpersonal attraction is reliable. The reliability of the six entries of humanization Cronbach's α = 0.845; The reliability of the three entries of sexual objectification Cronbach's α = 0.852, indicating that the measure of objectifying others is reliable. There was a significant difference between high and low nudity, p < 0.001, and no significant difference in overall aesthetics, p > 0.05.
Descriptive analysis and correlations
The descriptive and correlation analyses can be seen in Table 1 (dress code nudity: 0 = dress code high nudity, 1 = dress code low nudity; gender: 0 = female, 1 = male).Table 1 shows the means, standard deviations, and correlations between variables for dress nudity, appearance attraction, social attraction, task attraction, and objectifying others, as well as other variables.
|
M
|
SD
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
7
|
8
|
9
|
1. Dress nudity
|
0.49
|
0.50
|
1.00
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2. Gender
|
0.31
|
0.46
|
0.04
|
1.00
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
3. Age
|
21.73
|
2.46
|
0.06
|
0.28**
|
1.00
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
4.Grade
|
3.43
|
1.35
|
0.01
|
0.18*
|
0.87**
|
1.00
|
|
|
|
|
|
5.Style preference
|
3.85
|
0.87
|
-0.03
|
0.04
|
0.16
|
0.15
|
1.00
|
|
|
|
|
6.Appearance attraction
|
4.55
|
0.92
|
0.16
|
0.02
|
-0.04
|
0.00
|
-0.09
|
1.00
|
|
|
|
7.Social attraction
|
4.81
|
1.09
|
-0.33**
|
0.04
|
-0.11
|
-0.11
|
-0.08
|
0.36**
|
1.00
|
|
|
8. Task attraction
|
4.59
|
1.18
|
-0.50**
|
0.06
|
-0.12
|
-0.10
|
-0.16
|
0.32**
|
0.71**
|
1.00
|
|
9. Objectification
|
2.06
|
0.83
|
0.37**
|
-0.03
|
0.17
|
0.09
|
0.02
|
-0.17*
|
-0.66*
|
-0.58**
|
1.00
|
Table.1 Means, standard deviations, and correlations for the variables
The effects of dress nudity on interpersonal attraction and objectification of others
The results of independent samples t-test showed that dress code nudity had a significant effect on appearance attraction, t (134) = 2.37, p = 0.019, which again verified the research hypothesis H1a. Dress code nudity had a significant effect on social attraction, t(134) = -3.79, p = 0.000, which result also supported the research hypothesis H1b. The results of independent samples t-test showed that dress code nudity had a significant effect on task attraction, t(134) = -6.56, p = 0.000, which result also supported the research hypothesis H1c. The effect of dress nudity on task attraction was significant, t(134) = -6.56, p = 0.000, this result also supports research hypothesis H1c.
The results of the independent samples t-test indicated that the level of objectification by others triggered by the high nudity dress group was significantly higher than that of the low nudity dress group t(134) = 4.38, p = 0.000. The scores of the sexual objectification index of the women with high nudity dress can also be verified by the fact that when confronted with women with high nudity dress, the subjects perceived their personality traits to a lesser extent and viewed them as sexual objects to a greater extent, which is consistent with the study of Gurung and Chrouser's study[13].
Mediation analysis result
After controlling for variables such as gender, age, etc., the mediating effect was tested with reference to the Bootstrap method proposed by Hayes [29], and Model 4 was selected with a sample size of 5000 at 95% confidence interval. Mediation was performed with dress code nudity height as the independent variable, objectifying others as the mediating variable, and appearance attraction, social attraction, and task attraction as the dependent variables. model testing, and all continuous variables were standardized before analysis.
Appearance attraction
Results indicated that dress nudity significantly affected appearance attraction (c = 0.40, t(134) = 2.38, p=0.02), high dress nudity triggered high levels of objectifying others (a = 0.69; t(134) = 4.26, p = 0.000), and objectifying others had a significant negative effect on appearance attraction (b = - 0.26, t(134) = -2.83, p = 0.005). The direct effect of dress nudity on appearance attraction was significant (c′ = 0.58, t(134) = 3.28, p = 0.001). The mediating effect accounted for a direct effect ratio of 0.24 (|ab|/c') [30]. When confronted with female college students with high dress nudity, subjects increase their objectification level towards them, but positive evaluations of their appearance are suppressed, thus objectifying others plays a masking effect on dress nudity affecting appearance attraction.Brief results as shown in Fig. 3.
Social attraction
The results indicated that dress nudity significantly affected social attraction (c = -0.62, t(134) = -3.78, p = 0.000), high dress nudity triggered high levels of objectifying others (a = 0.69; t(134) = 4.26, p = 0.000), objectifying others had a significant negative effect on social attraction (b = -0.65, t(134) = -9.55, p = 0.000), dress nudity had a non-significant direct effect on social attraction (c′ = -0.17, t(134) = -1.27, p = 0.21), and mediating effect accounted for was 0.73 (ab/c), and when confronted with women with high dress code nudity, subjects increased their level of objectification towards them, thus with more reluctance to become friends with them. Research hypothesis H2b was tested. Brief results as shown in Fig. 4.
Task attraction
The results indicated that dress nudity significantly affected task attraction (c = -0.98, t(134) = -6.64, p = 0.000), high dress nudity triggered high levels of objectifying others (a = 0.69; t(134) = 4.26, p = 0.000), and objectifying others had a significant negative effect on social attraction (b = -0.45, t(134) = -6.41, p = 0.000), dress nudity had a significant direct effect on social attraction (c′ = -0.67, t(134) = -4.87, p = 0.000), and the mediating effect accounted for was 0.31 (ab/c), and when confronted with women with high levels of dress nudity, subjects increased their level of objectification towards them, thus associated with a greater reluctance to work with them, hypothesis H2c was tested. Brief results as shown in Fig. 5.
Discussion
For appearance attraction, correlation analyses showed that dress code nudity was not significantly correlated with appearance attraction, which was somewhat inconsistent with expectations. Further regression analyses showed that dress code nudity was a significant positive predictor of objectifying others, while objectifying others was a negative predictor of appearance attraction. Indirect and direct effects were opposite in sign, and there was a masking effect [30, 31].For social attraction, the results suggest that dress code nudity affects social attraction fully mediated by objectifying others. Dress nudity triggered high levels of objectification which in turn had a significant negative impact on social attraction. This is consistent with past findings that women's sexualization negatively influences others' perceptions of their competence, morality, sexuality, etc[10].For task attraction, research has shown that dress code nudity affects task attraction partially mediated by objectifying others. Dressing nude triggered high levels of objectification which in turn had a significant negative effect on task attraction. This is consistent with past research findings that women who dress more provocatively are perceived as less intelligent and less capable than women who dress conservatively [13, 32].