Psychology Assignment: Article Summaries and Analysis

This psychology assignment presents summaries of two articles. The first article examines how focus on appearance influences perceptions of women, leading to objectification and impacting perceived competence, morality, and warmth. It explores how stereotypes contribute to dehumanization, especially related to gender. The second article investigates the effects of fellow survivors' reactions on layoff survivors. It finds that the reactions of attractive survivors have a stronger influence, particularly when communication about the layoff is limited. This highlights the importance of social influence and communication in the workplace, especially during times of stress and job insecurity. Both articles are relevant to understanding social dynamics, perception, and their impact on individuals and groups.

Running Head: PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Notes

2
PSYCHOLOGY
Article 2
‘From women to objects: Appearance focus, target gender, and perceptions of warmth,
morality and competence’
In the concerned essay, the author tries to look at the perception of the people in
considering the others as object. Something that is less than that of a human being. The paper
draws upon the researches done in this respect to discuss about the perceptions and prejudices
involved in such ideals. The researches those have been the concern of the researcher in this
respect considers the ideals of competence, morality and warmth to be related with the
stereotypes involved in human perception. These ideals have been intertwined by the author
with the theory of objectification to discuss how the women are subjected to the stereotypes
that objectify them just from the visual perception people around them form about them.
According to the studies conducted, the exposure of the women concerned gave out virtues
that made them appear less competence, moral and warm. The focus being concentrated on
appearance resulted in the decrease of their virtues. As such the author concludes that the
active usage of the stereotypes along with is emphasize upon, its activation can be used as an
alternate way to explain the urge of people to dehumanize others. Such attributes of
dehumanizing people continued on the grounds of social discrimination and included factors
like the ones of race, attractiveness, occupation and physical attributes. Such discrimination
and objectification is deeply rooted in the inequity present in the attribute of the people in
terms of gender and its excessive and normalized perpetuation towards the women (Heflick et
al., 2011).

3
PSYCHOLOGY
Article 3
The Effects on Layoff Survivors of Their Fellow Survivors’ Reactions
The concern of the particular essay is to indulge in a detailed discussion of the factors
that create notable effect on the survivors in layoff on the other survivors who are fellow to
them. As such the findings of the essay explicated the fact that the performance of a
particular survivor is more prone to the influence of the reaction from their fellow ones. The
negative impact on the performance of the survivor. Such happens when the interaction of the
survivors is limited to a certain extent. In cases of the greater extent of communication among
the fellow survivors in terms of the turnover, performance and layoff, a positive implication
of the reaction can be noted. As such extensive communication and its positive outcome does
not take into consideration the factors of attractiveness as it is the case for the ones where the
communication is low and the attractiveness of the fellow survivors is most likely to create an
impact. The practical implication of it is being seen in the attributes of the mangers who are
adopting measures to implement layoffs in order to decrease the detrimental effect on the
attitude of the worker as well as their minimize. The proposition is that the people tend to get
more influenced by their fellow ones and as such certain people tend to have more influences
than others present around them (Brockner et al., 1997) .

4
PSYCHOLOGY
References
Brockner, J., Hurley, R., Dewitt, R. L., Wiesenfeld, B., Grover, S., Stephan, J., ... Martin, C.
(1997). The effects on layoff survivors of their fellow survivors' reactions. Journal of
Applied Social Psychology, 27(10), 835-863. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-
1816.1997.tb00274.x
Heflick, N. A., Goldenberg, J. L., Cooper, D. P., & Puvia, E. (2011). From women to objects:
Appearance focus, target gender, and perceptions of warmth, morality and
competence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(3), 572-581.