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Experiencing oneself as being beautiful: a phenomenological study informed by Sartre's ontology

Traditional research on person perception focuses primarily on the object-qualities of the person perceived. This empirical-phenomenological study concentrates instead on the power of the other's regard to awaken one's sense of subjectivity through an investigation of the experience of fee...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Qualitative research in psychology 2004-01, Vol.1 (1), p.55-68
Main Authors: Rao, Aruna, Churchill, Scott D
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Traditional research on person perception focuses primarily on the object-qualities of the person perceived. This empirical-phenomenological study concentrates instead on the power of the other's regard to awaken one's sense of subjectivity through an investigation of the experience of feeling beautiful under the other's gaze. Sartre's dialectical ontology of our being-for-others serves both as inspiration for the study and as an interpretive framework for its discussion. Narrative protocols were obtained from four female participants who were asked to describe situations in which they experienced themselves being perceived as beautiful. These data were then reflected upon following research principles derived from the literature of phenomenological psychology, as well as Dilthey's hermeneutics. Idiographic findings were used as a point of departure for formulating the 'essence' of the experience in terms of four constituents that were observed to interconnect both meaningfully and temporally as a sequence of moments within a structural whole. The possibility of overcoming the limitations of the Sartrean dialectic is then discussed in light of the findings.
ISSN:1478-0887
1478-0895
DOI:10.1191/1478088704qp005oa