The impact of state self-objectification on facial emotion recognition: the role of sexualized information

State Self-Objectification (SSO) refers to a temporary psychological state in which individuals become acutely aware of and focus on their physical appearance, typically as a result of external appearance-related cues. With societal emphasis on appearance growing, understanding SSO’s impact on emotional and social functioning is critical. This study employed event-related potential (ERP) technology and an emotional oddball paradigm to investigate the impact of SSO on facial emotion recognition and its temporal processing characteristics. Specifically, four ERP components (P1, N170, P2, and P3) associated with distinct stages of visual and emotional processing were analyzed. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that the high-SSO group exhibited longer reaction times and lower accuracy in facial emotion recognition, along with significantly smaller P3 amplitudes compared to the low-SSO group. Importantly, when recognizing negative emotions (as opposed to positive emotions), the high-SSO group displayed significantly larger N170 amplitudes. These findings suggest that SSO impairs late-stage cognitive processing (P3) and induces a pronounced negativity bias during early perceptual processing (N170). Experiment 2 incorporated sexualized information as a moderating factor and found that the high-SSO group showed longer reaction times and lower accuracy when recognizing positive and neutral emotions. Furthermore, independent of emotional valence, the high-SSO group exhibited significantly larger P1 amplitudes compared to the low-SSO group. Conversely, within the low-SSO group, recognizing negative emotions (relative to neutral emotions) elicited significantly larger N170 amplitudes. In summary, SSO significantly impairs both behavioral performance and neural processing during facial emotion recognition, with sexualized information further intensifying these effects. This research highlights the importance of understanding how appearance-focused social environments and self-objectification jointly disrupt the cognitive and affective mechanisms underlying social interactions.