The effects of sexual harassment, assault, and objectification on the self

ABSTRACT

Sexual objectification is an umbrella term for a diverse range of experiences that make someone feel as if they are merely a body that exists for the use and pleasure of others. This special issue presents nine empirical papers examining the connections between sexual objectification and self-relevant variables (e.g., self-concept; self-esteem). These papers provide innovative theoretical and methodological approaches to studying the antecedents and outcomes of sexual objectification. We encourage psychological scientists to build off the research in this special issue, expanding it into cross-cultural and policy contexts, thus providing potential solutions in the journey toward increased inclusion and social justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual harassment
• sexual assault
• sexual objectification
• self-concept
• self-esteem

Sexual objectification is an umbrella term for a diverse range of experiences that make someone feel as if they are merely a body that exists for the use and pleasure of others (Bartky, 1990; Loughnan et al., 2010; Vaes et al., 2011). These experiences vary in severity from catcalls and sexist jokes to sexual assault, and vary in context from one’s home or workplace to public spaces. Regardless of form, context or source, they are harmful psychologically (e.g., Fairchild & Rudman, 2008; Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997; Gervais et al., 2013). These experiences also are disturbingly common for women both in the United States and abroad (e.g., Australian Human Rights Commission, 2018; Chamie, 2018; Kearl, 2018; Sambaraju, 2020).

The prevalence of sexual objectification was brought into mainstream global social discourse in October 2017 when actor Alyssa Milano posted “#metoo” on social media, calling other women to share their experiences with sexual harassment, sexual assault, or other forms of sexual objectification. Within two weeks over 1.7 million people responded to Alyssa Milano’s hashtag initiative, and the hashtag continues to be used on various social media platforms whenever high profile cases of sexual objectification are reported by mainstream media outlets. We believe that these are timely issues, and that research that concerns sexual harassment and assault should be highlighted to inform the public discussion at this sensitive time, pushing the social conversation forward in order to encourage scientists, policy makers, and the general public toward supporting efforts for a more egalitarian, socially just, global society.

We guest-edited this special thematic issue of Self & Identity in the general spirit of these endeavors. In this issue, we encouraged submissions of empirical research exploring the many different forms of sexual objectification. We had a wonderful number of initial proposals, each dealing with diverse aspects of the key topics. We then went through the difficult decisions of selecting the proposals to invite for full submissions. We strove to balance conceptual and empirical rigor with diverse approaches and intriguing results. The finished product involves nine papers.

These papers fall into three general conceptual categories. The first three papers are united by a focus on understanding the connection between sexual objectification and women’s self-concept, as well as other related psychological variables. First, Maas and Cary examined how self-objectification, a common outcome of experiencing sexual objectification (e.g., Calogero & Pina, 2011), relates to identity development among emerging adult women. They further investigated participants’ global self-esteem and subjective feelings about their sexuality as potential mechanisms by which objectification may impact identity development. Next, Reimer and colleagues provided data examining how focusing on one’s appearance within the context of romantic heterosexual relationships can cause women’s self-objectification. The authors engaged couples in an appearance-focused priming manipulation followed by a task in which they discuss relationship-related disagreements. Men then completed measures about how they felt toward their partners, and women completed measures about how objectified they felt by their partners. The third paper by Wollast and colleagues examined sexual objectification in four different countries, examining the complex relations between women’s cultural orientation, self-compassion, body surveillance and body shame. Not only does this paper merge the literature on sexual objectification with the literature on self-compassion, but they embed these connections within cultural variables using diverse samples. Considerable research on sexual objectification has been conducted using samples drawn from limited populations (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic countries, aka., WEIRD samples; Henrich et al., 2010). Thus, a global perspective on sexual objectification is needed as the field moves forward (e.g., Traylor et al., 2020).

The second set of papers focus on women’s reactions to sexual objectification and the implications these various reactions may have for psychological well-being. First, Schneider and colleagues provided a content analysis of tweets from survivors of various forms of sexual objectification, examining how women described their experiences using social media. These data provide a novel, organic perspective that can be difficult to obtain in traditional research approaches (i.e., survey and experimental methods). Next, Vaccarino and Kawakami provided a series of experiments using scenarios in which someone makes sexist comments; the researchers manipulated aspects such as the social context and if/how the objectification is confronted (by either the target or a witness). These data have implications for understanding personal and societal reactions to confronting gender-based prejudice and sexual objectification broadly. In this section’s third paper, Mallet and colleagues examined how women’s actual and imagined responses to sexual objectification (either via blatant sexist remarks or sexist humor) can impact their subsequent tolerance for sexual harassment and perceptions toward survivors of harassment. Further, the researchers merge the areas of confrontation and reactions to disparaging humor with cognitive dissonance theory.

The third and final set of papers examine what are possible antecedents of sexual objectification, both of others and oneself. First, Harsey and Zubbrigen assessed whether engaging in sexual objectification of women predicts one’s own tendencies toward self-objectification. They investigated these patterns among both college-aged men and women. Next, Allen and colleagues examined how women may engage in self-sexualization as a way of dealing with being ostracized (i.e., ignored and excluded; Williams, 2009) either because of one’s personality or one’s physical appearance. After being either included or ostracized in an online interaction, participants created an avatar in a virtual environment (i.e., the measure of self-sexualization). In a complementary paper, Dvir et al. expand on previous research demonstrating that ostracized people’s cognitive and behavioral reactions often focus on recovering psychological needs threatened by ostracism (see Wesselmann et al., 2015 for review); they investigated the possibility that being ostracized may influence one’s perceptions of catcalls, perhaps seeing them as less threatening than they would be experienced otherwise in order to fortify depleted fundamental needs.

We hope that readers find these papers both informative and inspirational, providing new directions for future research. We are at a crucial moment historically in which there are global calls to reduce sexual objectification in its various forms and contexts. Psychological scientists have an important role to play in both continuing the global discussions as well as providing potential solutions to policymakers in the journey toward increased inclusion and social justice.

Acknowledgement

We thank Dr. Shira Gabriel, who was the presiding editor that provided us the opportunity and guidance to create this special issue. We thank both Dr. Gabriel and Dr. June Tangney for their support during the editorial process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.