Stop looking at me! associations between men's partner‐objectification and women's self‐objectification, body shame and life satisfaction in romantic relationships

Abstract

A growing amount of empirical evidence shows that sexual objectification can be elicited within the context of romantic relationships, leading to adverse consequences for women's well-being. However, most of this research assessed women's

Why Might Women Justify Dating Violence? The Role of Men’s Sexual Objectification of Their Romantic Partners Within Heterosexual Relationships

“…Regarding self-objectification, it emerged that negative self-perceptions in women mediated the relationship between men’s partner-sexual objectification and their attitudes toward dating violence. Specifically, in line with the existing literature (Pecini et al, 2022; Strelan & Pagoudis, 2018), we found that men’s partner-sexual objectification and women’s self-objectification correlated. Furthermore, self-objectification emerged as the underlying mechanism explaining the relationship between being sexually objectified by the romantic partner and acceptance of dating violence in women.…”

“…Thus, in our research, we investigated whether self-objectification in women would be positively associated with their attitudes toward dating violence (Hypothesis 3a). Furthermore, self-objectification is the primary consequence of objectifying experiences even in the context of romantic relationships (Pecini et al, 2022; Ramsey & Hoyt, 2015; Strelan & Pagoudis, 2018; but see Mahar et al, 2020) and represents the key mechanism linking experiences of sexual objectification to negative outcomes (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Thus, we tested whether self-objectification mediated the link between men’s partner-sexual objectification and women’s attitudes toward dating violence (Hypothesis 3b).…”

“…In the same direction, recent literature found that sexual objectification might have negative outcomes also within heterosexual romantic relationships (e.g., Ramsey et al, 2017). For example, it has been demonstrated that men’s objectified perceptions of their romantic partners are negatively associated with women’s perceived quality of their romantic relationships and life (Pecini et al, 2022; Sáez, Alonso-Ferres, et al, 2019).…”

Investigating the link between biological dehumanization and indirect aggression

“…Rudman and Mescher (2012) demonstrated that men who implicitly dehumanize women (as animals and objects) are also likely to rape and sexually harass them. Additionally, several studies (Bevens & Loughnan, 2019; Morera et al, 2022; Pecini et al, 2023) confirmed that dehumanization is associated with abuse in romantic relationships, greater dating violence, and more sexual aggression towards women.…”

Advancing science and creating a scientifically informed community at JCASP

“…The editorial team welcomes research from all areas of community and social psychology. We accept empirical, theoretical, and methodological articles, and welcome a wide range of methodologies, including quantitative (Pecini et al, 2022), qualitative (Varma & Siromahov, 2023), and mixed methods research (Kothari, Fischer, Mullican, Lipscomb, & Jaramillo, 2022), as well as correlational (Gray, Randell, Manning, & Cleveland, 2023), longitudinal (Joshanloo, 2022), and experimental designs (Mäkinen et al, 2022). Relatedly, we have expanded the types of articles that we accept.…”