Intimate partner violence is a global scourge. One in four Australian women have experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of an intimate partner. The perpetrators are overwhelmingly heterosexual men.
Many factors contribute to this form of violence. Persistent gender inequality is a fundamental systemic cause, but researchers have identified additional risk factors. These include alcohol and drug use, past experience of family violence, financial stress and sexist attitudes.
One psychological factor that may be implicated in intimate partner violence is objectification.
Feminist thinkers such as Cambridge scholar Rae Langton and American philosopher Martha Nussbaum have proposed men who treat their partners as “object-like” are disposed to harm them because they fail to see them as fully human.
Objectification can involve men judging their partner’s value in her physical appearance, seeing her as a possession, or denying her agency and autonomy. The common thread is a subtle or not-so-subtle form of dehumanisation.
Recent psychological research has tried to test these ideas, with intriguing results.
Our new research
Past research found young men who sexually objectify women are especially likely to perpetrate sexual violence. It also showed that men who unconsciously associate women with objects have a relatively high propensity for sexual harassment.
In our recently published work, we moved from considering violence towards women in general to violence towards men’s intimate partners. You might expect men would be less likely to objectify those they claim to love. The appalling statistics on intimate partner violence suggest otherwise.
Our new article presents findings from three studies on the role of objectification in intimate partner violence. Each study sampled American men aged 18 to 35 who were in a committed romantic relationship of at least one year’s duration.
In our first study, men completed a computer-based task – the Implicit Association Test – commonly used to measure unconscious bias. We adapted the task to assess how much they automatically associated women with inanimate objects or animals.
The group also responded to questionnaires measuring how often they engaged in a range of abusive and sexually coercive behaviours towards their current partners.
Although based on self-reporting, and therefore open to distortion, these measures are valid predictors of violent behaviour.
As expected, men with relatively strong tendencies to associate women with objects reported higher rates of violent and coercive behaviour. This effect did not occur because these men held more hostile sexist attitudes toward women.
Objectification and sexism were distinct predictors of intimate partner violence, suggesting that objectification independently contributes to this form of violence.
Voodoo dolls
Our second study extended the first in two ways. First, we adapted the association test to examine how much men automatically associated their partner with objects, rather than women in general.
Second, we added a more behavioural test of violence. The Voodoo Doll Task allows participants to use “pins” to stab a doll, presented on a computer screen, that shares their partner’s name.
Each participant has an opportunity to use as many pins as he wishes after vividly imagining a provocative scenario. He is at a bar with his partner when she starts flirting with another man and expressing discontent with her current relationship.
Stabbing a virtual doll with digital pins is not the same as inflicting actual violence, of course. However, people who use more pins are more prone to real-world violence. Their inhibitions against acting violently are likely weaker.
In our study, men who tended to associate their partners with inanimate objects reported higher rates of violence, as in the first study. They also stabbed the voodoo doll with more pins if they were highly upset by the provocative scenario.
Our first two studies examined objectification as the tendency to associate a person with objects. Our third considered it as the tendency to focus on the person’s physical appearance.
In our experiment, men were randomly assigned to write several sentences about their partner’s appearance or about her personality. They then completed the Voodoo Doll Task and several short questionnaires.
As we predicted, young men induced to focus on their partner’s appearance stabbed the doll with more pins.
They also rated their partner as having fewer personality traits associated with being emotional and capable of action (which contrasts the inertness of inanimate objects).
What this means in the real world
Our three studies indicate objectification plays a role in men’s intimate partner violence against women. Men who implicitly see their female partners as object-like are at greater risk of acting violently towards them.
Inducing an appearance mindset may also promote intimate partner violence, suggesting objectification may be implicated in violence even among men who are otherwise not prone to it.
These findings offer a new perspective on intimate partner violence and how to prevent it.
Fundamentally, they imply this violence is partially rooted in a failure of empathy. Some men are unwilling or unable to appreciate their partners as complete humans.
Cultural changes that boost or encourage men’s appreciation of women’s experiences, and reduce their focus on their physical appearance, may help reduce the terrible toll of violence in heterosexual intimate relationships.
Further information and support
If you are a victim of family violence or in a relationship that makes you fearful about your own or anyone else’s safety, seek help as soon as possible. You have the right to be safe.
- Elder Abuse Helpline | 0800 32 668 65 – 24 hours
- Family violence information line (link is external) | 0800 456 450
- Gandhi Nivas (link is external) – supporting men to be free from violence | 0800 426 344
- Hey Bro helpline (link is external) – supporting men to be free from violence | 0800 HeyBro (439 276)
- Hohou te rongo kahukura – outing violence (link is external) – building rainbow communities free from violence
- National network of stopping violence (link is external) | 03 391 0048
- Sensitive Claims ACC (link is external) | 0800 735 566
- Shakti – for migrant and refugee women | 0800 742 584 – 24 hours
- Shine National Helpline (link is external) | 0508 744 633 – 24 hours
- Victim Support (link is external) – support for men and women victims | 0800 842 846 – 24 hours
- Women’s Refuge crisis (link is external) line | 0800 733 843 – 24 hours
- Rainbow Youth (link is external) – promoting healthy queer, trans and takatäpui relationships
- First published in The Conversation
- Adriana Vargas Saenz is Lead Researcher at Atlassian & Honorary Fellow, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne
- Nick Haslam is Professor of Psychology, The University of Melbourne
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