Objects of Inquiry: Exploring the Objectification of Young Female Targets

• In Event: Who Deserves Moral Concern? The Perception of Humanity and Its Role in Moral Reasoning

Abstract

Objectification is a pervasive social-cognitive phenomenon that threatens individuals’ perceived sense of personhood, humanity, and moral standing (Loughnan et al., 2010; Heflick & Goldenberg, 2009; Gray et al., 2007). As empirical findings and real-world contexts reveal, women and girls are the primary targets: indeed, of the 800,000 humans trafficked across international borders annually, 80% are women and girls (Deshpande & Nour, 2013). Despite the gravity and ubiquity of objectification, no research has explored its developmental roots. How do young girls come to be objectified as targets, and how do children and adults as perceivers learn to participate in this process?
To address these questions, we developed a novel measure of objectification accessible to both child and adult participants, and anchored it in the specific forms of objectification we considered most relevant for young targets: dehumanization (Haslam et al., 2006) and depersonalization (Loughnan et al., 2010). We tested this measure with a sample of 4- to 8-year-old children (N = 66; Mage = 6.22 years; 50% female) and college-aged adults (N = 77; 54% female).
Our first measure probed conceptual overlaps between girls and objects through a speeded categorization task. In this task, children and adults were shown photographs of gendered objects (i.e., toys that looked like boys and girls) and humans (i.e., real-life boys and girls) and had to categorize each as a “toy” (object) or “kid” (human) as quickly as possible. Both children and adults made the most errors categorizing male-gendered toys (mistakenly categorizing them as “kids”; b = -1.05, SE = .24, t = -4.40, p < .001; Figure 1), suggesting a pervasive over-conflation of the category “human” in the case of boy (but not girl) targets.
Our next measure explored children’s and adults’ explicit attributions of mental life—in particular, those aspects related to functional bodily capacities (adapted from Weisman et al., 2017). Here, we found that adults attributed more human-like properties (e.g., “gets really hungry”) and fewer object-like properties (e.g., “never sweats”) to boy targets compared to girl targets, b = .95, SE = .31, t = 3.05, p = .002 (Figure 2). Children showed no such effect, allocating both human- and object-like properties to both targets at similar rates.
In our final measure, we examined the mental state content present in children’s and adults’ spontaneous descriptions of targets. As predicted, adults used more mental state words (i.e., those pertaining to the intentions, desires, and emotions of the target) when describing boy, compared to girl, targets (b = -1.30, SE = .56, t = 2.34, p = .02). Children did not differentiate between targets in spontaneous ascriptions of mental life.
These findings provide emergent evidence that objectification acts upon young children both as targets (across all three metrics) and perceivers (in our measure of conceptual associations). Given the moral consequences of objectification, this research opens up a critical pathway toward understanding the antecedents, correlates, and transmission of this phenomenon, as well as possible methods for intervention. Future work focused on these objectives will be discussed.

Authors

• Rachel Leshin, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Marjorie Rhodes, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author