Ten minutes of mild electrical stimulation changed the brain's tendency to see women as objects, University of Exeter study finds

The psychological tendency to see women not as full human beings but as 'objects' or 'products' can be temporarily changed by applying mild electrical stimulation to the brain, scientists in the United Kingdom have claimed in a new study.

In the study conducted by the University of Exeter, applying a very mild electrical current to the top of the scalp for 10 minutes changed the direct tendency to process revealing photographs of women as 'objects'.

The study was published in the science journal Social Neuroscience. The researchers say the result has opened a new path to understanding how psychological bias works in the brain.

The method rests on a familiar feature of image recognition. The human brain recognises a person's face or full body very quickly when it is upright, but takes longer when the image is inverted. For inanimate objects such as machines or furniture, this upright-versus-inverted difference has little effect on the brain.

Several earlier studies found that for both male and female viewers, this recognition advantage shrinks for photographs of women in revealing or degrading poses — meaning the brain subconsciously treats the woman as an 'object' rather than a full person. The exception does not appear for photographs of men.

In this experiment, 54 female students and 22 male students took part. They were shown a number of upright and inverted photographs of male and female models in underwear, and were later asked to pick out the earlier photographs from among new ones.

One group of participants received mild electrical current to the head for 10 minutes. The second group received a placebo, or sham, stimulation — just 30 seconds of a faint signal, enough for them to feel the experience of stimulation without any major change taking place.

The results showed that the placebo group recognised upright photographs of men easily but did not get the same advantage with photographs of women — behaviour similar to recognising objects. The group that received the full 10 minutes of real stimulation, by contrast, recognised upright photographs of women quickly, and the brain's difference between processing men's and women's photographs disappeared.

The study's lead researcher, Professor Ciro Civile, said: 'Sexual objectification means considering a person not as a complete individual but merely as an object to be looked at or used. It is a dehumanising behaviour, and women are its most frequent victims.'

He added: 'Our preliminary results prove that this bias in our visual system, in processing visible content, can be changed through mild stimulation of the brain — at least temporarily.'

Professor Civile made clear, however, that this is not a complete solution to a social problem. 'This is a laboratory experiment. We did not measure the participants' real attitudes or social behaviour here, and brain stimulation is not a medicine for sexuality or gender discrimination. But it has created a new way to understand how objectification works in the brain,' he said.

The researchers said this objectifying outlook is deeply connected with tolerance of sexual harassment, body shame, eating disorders and depression.

Professor Civile said earlier studies tried to reduce this bias by changing the type of photograph or the viewer's mindset. This is the first time the subconscious transformation of vision has been tested by stimulating the viewer's brain directly. Both groups were shown the same photographs, he noted — the problem lies not in the photograph but in how the brain sees and analyses it, which will help explain how gender bias arises in visual processing.