Why Is Sexualization Dehumanizing? The Effects of Posture Suggestiveness and Revealing Clothing on Dehumanization

Abstract

Research has shown that sexualized people are perceived as possessing fewer traits of a human being. Most scholars have argued that these effects are driven by revealing clothing, with targets wearing swimsuits or lingerie being perceived as possessing less mind and less humanness in comparison with nonsexualized targets. However, revealing clothing in these studies was often confounded with other sexualizing factors, such as posture suggestiveness, and, so, the aspects which lead people to perceive women in object-like ways remain unclear. This article begins to fill this gap by examining the role of two key sexualizing factors, namely revealing clothing and posture suggestiveness, on objectification-related traits. After exposure to a picture of a woman, 223 participants were asked to indicate the extent to which this woman possessed warmth, competence, and morality. For competence and warmth, we found an interaction between revealing clothing and posture suggestiveness: Posture suggestiveness caused less attribution of warmth and competence to women wearing revealing clothing, but not for women wearing less revealing clothing. For morality, we found that women in suggestive (vs. nonsuggestive) postures were perceived as possessing less morality, regardless of the type of clothing. The implications of these findings for the field are discussed.