Mild electric shocks to the brain have been found to remove a bias that is linked to the sexual objectification of women, a new study has found.

Research, conducted by the University of Exeter, found that applying an electrical current to the scalp for ten minutes improved how well participants recognised upright sexualised images of women, and removed a difference in the way such images of women and men were processed.

It had already been established that people are much better at recognising faces and bodies when they are are upright than when they are upside down – whereas for objects it makes far less difference.

Studies have found that in both male and female viewers, this upright advantage shrinks when it comes to sexualised images of women but not men – suggesting they are processed more like objects.

Professor Ciro Civile, who led the study, said: “Sexual objectification means treating a person as a body to be looked at or used, rather than as a whole person. It’s dehumanising and most often experienced by women.

“Our findings are initial evidence that the way our visual system processes sexualised images of women can be changed, at least temporarily, by mildly stimulating the brain. This was a lab study – we didn’t measure attitudes or behaviour, and brain stimulation is no cure for sexism – but it gives us a new way to study how objectification works.”

Sexual objectification has been linked to a greater tolerance of harassment, as well body shame, eating disorders, anxiety and depression.

The study, which has been published in the journal , involved 54 female students and 22 males students, with participants asked to memorise sexualised images of female and models in underwear, both upright and upside down.

They were then asked whether they recognised the models when these were mixed in with unseen images.

Half of the group received a mild electrical current to the scalp for 10 minutes, while the other half were given a placebo treatment of just 30 seconds of stimulation. Neither the participants or the experimenters knew who was in which group.

In the placebo group, participants recognised images of male models much easier when they were upright, compared to them being upside down. For images of women, that advantage was significantly smaller, closer to the pattern seen for objects.

In the group who received the active electric brain stimulation, recognition of upright images of women improved, and the difference between how images of men and women were processed was no longer present.

Professor Civile said: “Until now, studies had reduced this bias by changing the images or the viewer’s mindset – for example, by pixelating sexual body parts, giving humanising information, or making people feel less powerful. We acted directly on the brain of the person doing the looking instead.

“Both groups saw exactly the same pictures, so the bias seems to lie in how we process the images rather than in the images themselves, which opens new avenues for understanding how gender-based biases arise in perception.”