Do You See What I See? The Consequences of Objectification in Work Settings for Experiencers and Third Party Predictors

Abstract

Sexual objectification is a significant problem that permeates all areas of women's lives including the workplace. This research examines the impact of sexual objectification on women in work settings by integrating objectification, sexual harassment, and affective forecasting theories. We used a laboratory analogue that included undergraduate women who actually experienced objectification during a work interview (i.e., experiencers) and third-party predictors (including female and male undergraduates as well as female and male community workers) who anticipated the effects of objectification (i.e., predictors). We measured actual and anticipated emotions, performance, and sexual harassment following objectification. We found that both mild and severe objectification caused weaker positive affect, stronger negative affect, worse work performance, and higher sexual harassment judgments, but these effects were primarily driven by predictors anticipating worse outcomes following objectification compared to what experiencers actually reported. We also found that experiencers' responses to objectification

On Methods and Marshmallows: A Roadmap for Science That Is Openly Feminist and Radically Open

“…We reported this finding and a full range of explanations for it (e.g., that women wanted an opportunity to show the objectifying man that she was not a sex object; that women sometimes enjoyed sexualization) and noted that future research should explore these results further. Indeed, we found a range of responses to objectification, depending on whether women enjoyed sexualization (Kimble et al, 2016) or had internalized sexist ideologies (Gervais et al, 2016) in subsequent studies.…”

Validation of a Perception of Objectification in the Workplace Short Scale (POWS)

“…When considering the consequences of objectification in the field of work, it can be seen that this type of relationship is associated with "cognitive deconstructive" states (Christoff, 2014), with a loss of perceived humanity (Loughnan et al, 2017), occupational burnout (Baldissarri et al, 2014;Szymanski and Mikorski, 2016;Caesens et al, 2017), decrease of job satisfaction and depression (Szymanski and Feltman, 2015), sexual harassment (Wiener et al, 2013;Gervais et al, 2016), and self-objectification (Auzoult and Personnaz, 2016a). Self-objectification constitutes dementalization, i.e., a feeling of having lost the capacity to act, to plan, to exercise control over oneself or one's environment, or to feel emotions (Gray et al, 2011).…”

Can Meaning at Work Guard Against the Consequences of Objectification?

“…Most of the time, the consequences are perceived as negative. This type of relationship is thought to partly account for bullying (Gervais, Wiener, Allen, Farnum, & Kimble, 2016) and lead to occupational burnout (Baldissari et al., 2014; Caesens, Stinglhamber, Demoulin, & De Wilde, 2017). At the same time, few studies have focused on the regulation of the process for moderating these negative effects.…”

“…Studies in this field highlight the fact that objectification is associated with “cognitive deconstructive” states (Bastian & Haslam, 2011; Christoff, 2014) which translates into feeling numb and lethargic. Objectification is also associated with an increased risk of occupational burnout (Baldissari et al., 2014; Caesens et al., 2017; Szymanski & Mikorski, 2016) and sexual harassment (Gervais et al., 2016; Wiener, Gervais, Allen, & Marquez, 2013). Similarly, objectification is associated with a loss of perceived human traits such as warmth, competence, morality, and uniqueness for those who are considered as objects (Loughnan, Baldissarri, Spaccatini, & Elder, 2017) and a decrease of job satisfaction (Szymanski & Feltman, 2015).…”