ORIGINAL ARTICLE Others as Objects: How Women and Men Perceive the Consequences of Self-Objectification Anna-Kaisa Newheiser & Marianne LaFrance & John F. Dovidio Published online: 26 September 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract Although the negative psychological impact of self-objectification is well-documented, whether people generally recognize this impact in other people remains unclear. We hypothesized that due to their relatively limited experience with self-objectification, men are less likely than women to perceive its ramifications. In Study 1a, where 132 U.S. undergraduates were induced to perceive a female target as self-objectifying, women saw more negative emotions in her. Study 1b, using a U.S. online sample (N =170), indicated that this difference was not due to participants’ own state of self-objectification. In Study 2, when participants (U.S. online sample, N =84) identified with objectified targets, women again reported stronger negative reactions, further supporting our hypothesis. Implications and future directions are discussed. Keywords Self-objectification . Sexual objectification . Gender differences . Emotions Introduction Sexual objectification occurs when a person is treated as a mere body that exists for the sexual use and pleasure of others (Bartky 1990; Nussbaum 1999). In contemporary Western culture, women are regularly treated as sex objects (Swim et al. 2001; Wolf 1991). Most psychological research on this phenomenon, conducted primarily in the U.S. and Australia, has concentrated on the ramifications faced by women experiencing objectification. Living in a culture that pervasively objectifies women leads many girls and women to view themselves as objects to be evaluated based on physical attributes—that is, to self- objectify (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997; McKinley and Hyde 1996). Although there is ample evidence of the negative consequences of self-objectification, particularly for Western women (for a review, see Moradi and Huang 2008), little is known about people’ s perceptions of how experiencing objectification impacts others. Adapting basic arguments from objectification theory (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997), we propose that men may be less likely than women to realize that treating oneself as an object is a negative experience, because men’ s personal experience with self-objectification is less pervasive and less negative than women’ s (e.g., Fredrickson et al. 1998). In Study 1a, employing a sample of U.S. undergraduates, and Study 1b, using an online sample of U.S. respondents of diverse ages, participants were induced to perceive a target person as self-objectifying. In Study 2, another online sample of U.S. respondents was instructed to identify with objectified targets. In each study, we examined gender differences in perceptions of the affective impact of self- objectification. Taking a step toward understanding the perpetuation of self-objectification, the present studies also indicate potential avenues for reducing the prevalence of sexual objectification in contemporary culture. Self-objectification occurs when a person privileges her or his physical attractiveness over nonobservable body attributes such as subjective feelings of physical compe- tence and health (Fredrickson et al. 1998). Those who self- objectify relate to their own bodies as external evaluators (McKinley and Hyde 1996). In evaluating one’ s own body from such a third-person perspective, a self-objectifying person relies on cultural standards of attractiveness, A.-K. Newheiser (*) : M. LaFrance : J. F. Dovidio Department of Psychology, Yale University, 2 Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven, CT 06511, USA e-mail: anna-kaisa.newheiser@yale.edu Sex Roles (2010) 63:657–671 DOI 10.1007/s11199-010-9879-y