Body concealment, namely the attitudes and strategies specifically aimed at avoiding the other’s gaze towards one’s body, is here advanced as a relevant manifestation of chronic self-objectification. We juxtapose it to body exposure, that is the pursuit of being the object of others’ gaze. Three validation studies conducted in Italy (Studies 1 and 2) and the UK (Study 3), and an additional focus group, showed that body concealment and exposure are distinct responses, both positively linked to self-objectification. Importantly, distinct dimensions of self-objectification were associated with body concealment and body exposure: the internalization of the observer’s perspective was linked to body concealment via body shame; the internalization of objectifying ideals, instead, was associated with greater exposure (Study 4, Italy). Notably, body concealment, but not body exposure, was related to health issues typically linked to self-objectification, such as depression and disordered eating (Study 5, UK). Together, these studies (Ntotal = 2853) introduce body concealment as a new phenomenon within the sexual objectification framework, distinct from body exposure. From a theoretical perspective, this distinction reconciles seemingly contradictory evidence. From an applied point of view, body concealment has specific negative implications for women’s well-being, deserving the attention of scholars and practitioners.
The purpose of this article is to present the author’s theory of cultural identity, its bicultural extension, and its research applications in the field of acculturation psychology.
Numerous identity concepts are organized into a three-tiered taxonomy in the introductory section. It starts with the classic bifurcation between individual and collective, of which the latter is further divided into social and cultural, as two distinct versions. Cultural identity can finally take a single, bi, or multicultural shape.
Attempts to incorporate social identity theory into acculturation research have been criticized as inadequate. Cultural identity is based on three content layers that comprise the content of objective and subjective culture: symbolism, language, and axiology. They characterize first or secondary culture acquisition equally, but the levels of achieved competencies and affective cathexes are rarely balanced.
Cultural identity in each of the three layers is a relational concept, meaning it is a product of competence and cathexis. The theoretical and measurement frameworks are precisely presented and illustrated by the results of recent studies, which suggest the partiality of bicultural identity, broken down into components related to the country of settlement and origin.
Using the conceptual framework outlined earlier, the final part of the paper is a showcase of the author’s acculturation experience in Nigeria. It is cast against two triads of cultural dimensions, largely differentiating West Africa and Poland within the European Union: traditionalism and task orientation. Cultural distance on both hinders and even prevents the formation of a balanced bicultural identity. For a person of a European descent, even a longer stay in Africa remains a chal-lenge, an exotic experience, and a mission, where the civilizational gap impedes the acceptance of life principles that contradict European heritage and modernity.
Past research has found that gender-inclusive language is more commonly used in egalitarian cultures. People in middle-class communities not only endorse more egalitarian values but also more strongly believe that social change is possible than people in working-class communities. As such, there may be a higher demand for and, thus, use of gender-inclusive language in middle-class professions than for working class professions. Two studies investigated the use of feminine and gender-inclusive job titles for working vs. middle class professions in two grammatical gender languages, namely feminine job titles in Polish corpus texts (Study 1) and gender-inclusive job titles in Swiss German job advertisements (Study 2). Results showed that feminine and gender-inclusive job titles were indeed more often used for middle- than for working-class professions in both countries. These findings document the need to take social class into account in future language research as well as in the implementation of language reforms.
In three studies, we investigated the role of linguistic features characterizing texts aiming to mobilize others. In Study 1 (N = 728), participants produced a leaflet either mobilizing others to engage in an action or expressing their thoughts about that action, and evaluated how action-oriented their text was. Mobilizing texts included more verbs and concrete words, and the presence of these linguistic characteristics was positively linked to participants’ evaluations of their messages as action-oriented. In Studies 2 and 3 (N = 557 and N = 556), independent groups of participants evaluated texts produced in Study 1. Readers’ perceptions of texts as action-oriented were associated with the same linguistic features as in Study 1 and further positively linked to perceived message effectiveness (Study 2) and behavioral intention (Study 3). The studies reveal how encoding and decoding of verbs and concrete words serve as distinct persuasive tools in calls to action.
