Graduation Year

2022

Publication Date

Spring 2022

Abstract

The objectification theory suggests that women are subjected to more comments about their appearance than men, but in the field of athletics and sports analysts, newer perspectives suggest that there are fewer distinctions between how male and female athletes are portrayed. The present study examined whether there were differences in broadcast commentary of men’s and women’s Olympic basketball gold medal games, including comments about the players looks and appearance, their physicality and athleticism, and the pattern of name used. The coding method employed was developed based on previous research and used to quantify the frequency of each category. Two coders completed all ratings and interrater reliability was strong to very strong. The average ratings from the coders were calculated and analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U nonparametric analysis of independent samples. The null hypotheses could not be rejected for almost all categories with the exception of intelligence & mental skill which had a higher mean rank for the commentators of the women’s game as compared with the men’s game. Implications and future directions of research are discussed.

Disciplines

Psychology

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Psychology Commons

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