Adriana Manago | University of California, Santa Cruz (original) (raw)

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Papers by Adriana Manago

Although everyday exposure to media content that sexually objectifies women is believed to lead w... more Although everyday exposure to media content that
sexually objectifies women is believed to lead women to sexualize
themselves, research testing this connection has produced
mixed results. Most studies have focused only on the selfobjectification
component of self-sexualization, and on limited
assessments of media exposure. Our goal was to extend tests of
this component of objectification theory both to understudied
media genres and to men, and to do so using broader measures
of self-sexualization. Surveying 1,107 U.S. undergraduate students
(658 women and 449 men), we used structural equation
modeling to test the contributions of exposure to popular reality
programs, romantic-themed movies, and music videos to selfsexualization
(a latent construct comprised of body surveillance,
enjoyment of sexualization, and importance of sexual appeal).
Frequent consumption of reality TV programs consistently predicted
self-sexualization for women and men, and music video
exposure predicted self-sexualization only for men. Findings
confirm pathways proposed by objectification theory and indicate
unique contributions of understudied media.

An Interdisciplinary, Searchable, and Linkable Resource, 2015

Friendship and Happiness, 2015

ABSTRACT This study tested and extended Greenfield’s theory of social change and human developmen... more ABSTRACT This study tested and extended Greenfield’s theory of social change and human development to adolescent development in Arab communities in Israel undergoing rapid social change. The theory views sociodemographic changes—such as contact with an ethnically diverse urban setting and spread of technology—as driving changes in cultural values. In one research design, we compared three generations, high school girls, their mothers, and their grandmothers, in their responses to value-assessment scenarios. In a second research design, we compared girls going to high school in an ethnically diverse city with girls going to school in a village. As predicted by the theory, a t test and ANOVA revealed that both urban life and membership in the youngest generation were significantly related to more individualistic and gender-egalitarian values. Regression analysis and a bootstrapping mediation analysis showed that the mechanism of change in both cases was possession of mobile technologies.

This study tests the hypothesis that societal change from subsistence agriculture to a market ec... more This study tests the hypothesis that societal change from subsistence agriculture to a market economy with higher levels of formal schooling leads to an increase in individualistic values
that guide human development. Values relating to adolescent development and the transition to adulthood were compared across three generations of women in 18 families in the Maya
community of Zinacantán in southern Mexico. Grandmothers grew up in Zinacantán when it was a farming community; mothers grew up during the introduction of commerce in the late
1970s and 1980s; daughters are now experiencing adolescence with an opportunity to attend high school in their community. Comparisons were also conducted between 40 female and male
adolescents in high school and a matched sample of 40 adolescents who discontinued school after elementary. Values were measured using eight ethnographically derived social dilemmas about adolescent relationships with parents and peers, work and family gender roles, and sexuality and partnering. One character in the dilemmas advocates for interdependent values;
a second character advocates for independent values. High school adolescents were more likely to endorse characters articulating independent values than non–high school adolescents, mothers, and grandmothers. Involvement in a market economy was also associated with higher levels of independent value endorsement in the mother and grandmother generations. Results suggest that the introduction of commerce drove value changes between grandmother and mother generations, and now schooling drives change. Qualitative examples of participants’ responses also illustrate how families negotiate shifting values.