Integrating Sexual Objectification With Object Versus Person Recognition

Abstract

Objectification refers to treating people as objects rather than persons. When people are sexually objectified, they are reduced to their sexualized bodies or body parts, available for satisfying the desires of others. At the same time, research on object and person recognition suggests that people are perceived configurally, whereas objects are perceived analytically. For example, the inversion effect (i.e, inverted stimuli are more difficult to recognize than upright ones) occurs for person recognition and not object recognition. Based on our suggestion that sexualized women are perceived similarly to objects, we hypothesized that an inversion effect would emerge for the recognition of sexualized men, but not women. Consistently, an inversion effect only occurred for sexualized men, but not women. Implications for objectification theory are discussed.