Assessing neural responses towards objectified human targets and objects to identify processes of sexual objectification that go beyond the metaphor

Abstract

Objectification – reducing a someone to a something – represents a powerful and potentially damaging way in which we can see and treat others. Women are often victims of processes of objectification that occur whenever a woman is reduced to her body or certain body parts. What remains unclear is the extent to which a woman becomes an object when objectified. Using the oddball paradigm in three experiments, participants’ neural activity was measured while they analyzed frequently presented male and female human stimuli and infrequently presented gender-matched doll-like objects. The infrequent doll-like objects were expected to trigger a late event-related neurophysiological response (P300) the more they were perceived different from the repeated, human stimuli (i.e., the oddball effect). In Experiment 1, the oddball effect was significantly smaller for objectified women compared to objectified men. Results of Experiment 2 confirmed that this effect was confined to objectified depictions of women. In Experiment 3, no semantic references to the human-object divide were provided, but objectified women were still perceived more similar to real objects. Taken together, these results are the first to demonstrate that the perception of women, when objectified, changes in essence beyond the metaphor.

Media-Induced Sexual Harassment: The Routes from Sexually Objectifying Media to Sexual Harassment

“…Dehumanization can be a worrying and degrading consequence of sexual objectification of women (Loughnan and Pacilli 2014;Vaes et al 2014;Vaes et al 2011). Research has established that sexually objectified women, but not men, not only are visually processed in a piecemeal fashion, similar to the processing style involved in the recognition of objects (Bernard et al 2012;Cogoni et al 2018a;Gervais et al 2012; see also Bernard et al 2013; Civile and Obhi 2016; Schmidt and Kistemaker 2015; Tarr 2013, for a debate), but also are perceived as more similar to real objects (Vaes et al 2019).…”

An Initial Test of the Cosmetics Dehumanization Hypothesis: Heavy Makeup Diminishes Attributions of Humanness-Related Traits to Women

“…This possibility is consistent with research which has found that less configural face processing predicts lower attribution of humanness (Hugenberg et al 2016;Wilson et al 2018). In addition, recent research showed that sexualized women are more likely to be categorized as doll-like objects (Vaes et al 2019), so it would be interesting to examine whether the dehumanization of women with makeup might be mediated by perceptions of women as being doll-like at an early stage of person perception.…”

Resolving the Human–Object Divide in Sexual Objectification: How We Settle the Categorization Conflict When Categorizing Objectified and Nonobjectified Human Targets

“…Finally, the third line of research directly compared the extent to which individuals perceive similarities between objectified human targets and objects (Morris & Goldenberg, 2015; Vaes et al, 2019). Vaes and colleagues used the oddball paradigm, in which participants’ neural activity was measured, while they categorized frequently presented male and female human stimuli and infrequently presented gender-matched doll-like objects.…”

“…This similarity can become quite literal as recent research has demonstrated. Through a direct comparison between objectified human and object stimuli, it has been shown that objectified women are visually perceived as more similar to objects compared to objectified men at a behavioral and a neural level (Vaes, Cristoforetti, Ruzzante, Cogoni, & Mazza, 2019). This result suggests that the typical human–object divide can fade, especially when women are objectified.…”