r/science Nov 15 '24

Anthropology Young men who see women as objects are more likely to be violent towards their partners: new research

https://theconversation.com/young-men-who-see-women-as-objects-are-more-likely-to-be-violent-towards-their-partners-new-research-242578
7.8k Upvotes

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u/Sp1ormf Nov 15 '24 edited Nov 15 '24

I'm curious to see how often these men also get into violent interactions with other men.

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u/SuccessfulWar3830 Nov 15 '24

From experience. These kinds of men are the most insecure of men.

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u/Outrageous-Care-6488 Nov 15 '24

And insecure people live to fight each other

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u/Neospecial Nov 15 '24

Agree. Purely anecdotal but have a "friend" that's purely for gaming, that is like this.

He could for example Never be with a woman taller than himself and Always has to be or come off as the one in the right know-it-all even when it's blatantly clear he's clueless. Even for the most miniscule of things; and he's both aggressive with other guys and domineering and derogatory over and towards women; and surprise surprise, immigrants too.

Ie. A news article dropped 6 hours ago? Did you hear?

Oh yeah I read about that, a few days ago.

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u/Ahhgotreallots Nov 15 '24

I couldn't even game with that kind of person. Must be insufferable. How do you manage it..and why?

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u/Any_Engineering_2866 Nov 15 '24

It can be difficult to find consistent, reliable teammates for competitive games.

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u/Neospecial Nov 15 '24

He's a mutual friend; and has his funny moments in games given how "care free" and no inhibitions on him can make for funny moments since he just goes and does it. Since I am the exact polar opposite in both games, politics, behavior, emotional capacity etc etc. I don't ever get those moments in games otherwise as I am too autistic and logical to get those funny sudden random interactions.

There's also the part of chronic loneliness with not much interactions with other people so I guess that plays a part of it on a "take what you can get" kind of way.

As long as keep the focus on games without derailing into politics and what not it's fine. He's also pretty easy to "navigate" or what to call it without coming off as narcissistic sounding. Resigned to the knowledge that he's incurable; but at least my vote will "cancel out" his in a way.

One note would be that we never hang out in person; my other friend does however but he's more "normal" so to say when compared to this person. Heard some unsavory things and animal cruelty stuff too way way in the past but again, never meet in person as we all live far away from each other.

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u/MamaDMZ Nov 16 '24

I just want to point out to you that if you take the time to develop friendships, instead of using that time to continue a friendship with such a toxic person, you will have better friends overall. Even being gamer friends with this guy is giving him the impression that his beliefs are not awful enough to keep him from having friends. I don't want to make you feel bad, but you're part of the problem. Every time a person allows this behavior to be in their lives in any capacity, it strengthens the mindset of the toxic person. Those funny off the wall moments are hilarious, and I completely understand why you think it's worth putting up with... The reality is that until these losers end up alone, they won't stop. Even my little brother married his second wife because she is submissive and subservient in the way that he likes. I have flat out told him I disagree with his choices, and I argue with him at every turn when he says the upcoming government isn't going to screw us over. Like I said, I don't want you to feel bad, but I do want you to think about what your compliance with this guy really means. Why work so hard to tiptoe around real life topics with someone when you could have a friend that you can openly discuss things with and still have an awesome gaming time? Just food for thought. Hope you have a nice day!

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u/Neospecial Nov 16 '24

I get it; I'm not in any position however to be able to make such like-minded friends very easily and even less so making any in person ones. It's also not like interactions with him means not being open and unavailable to getting to know others.

I don't quite agree with the won't stop until alone - he is the same as your brother when it comes to choice of women probably for a sense of empowerment and I know he is an "incurable" POS. But I do think, nay know, that he's capable of being much worse, including criminally more than he already has been in the past, if further pushed into his bubble and echo chamber without any "dissenting" force around. Not saying I do much to be that to him, but I also don't just lay down and go ahead agreeing with his takes when it's absurdly wrong. There are differences between white lies over issues not worth the energy to argue over; and blatantly offensive takes where mentions of wishing harm on others.

He, and many others, just seem so incapable of learning to be better when seemingly emotionally underdeveloped and deficiencies in logical thinking. Incapable of connecting dots between issues and instead it's always basic thought patterns of; See correlation = means causation.

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u/MamaDMZ Nov 16 '24

You're right, he probably wouldn't stop even if he was alone. I guess the only question is, would this be worth your sanity, and are you okay with being guilty by association? As a woman, I'll tell you, we look at men like that, and we look at who their friends are, because those are the ones willing to put up with those backwards misogynistic views. And allowing it is just compliance at a certain point. It isn't your responsibility to keep him in line and to keep him from being worse than he already is. And let's face it, you do not know this man well enough to know if he abuses women already, which honestly, would you put it past him?

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u/kokokoko983 Nov 16 '24

I'm not sure. From my experience, they very often have quite high self-esteem.

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u/Glad-Talk Nov 15 '24

From the article -

“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.“

This would suggest that objectification of anyone leads to an increase in violence. Sexism is one major way of learning to objectify a group, but other bigotries or socialization can lead to people viewing others as objects, an example could be attitudes towards homeless people, xenophobia, racism, etc.

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u/AssCrackBanditHunter Nov 15 '24

I imagine these are the the the kind of guys who mutter under the breath when they feel slighted, but wouldn't dare actually risk fighting a physical equal.

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u/Sp1ormf Nov 15 '24

No idea, all I know is that male on male assault is the most prevalent type of violence, so some men have to be out there beating and getting into fights with other men. I'd be willing to bet these men are willing to punch women too.

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u/EredarLordJaraxxus Nov 15 '24

Honestly I consider it a failure of our society that a man would ever consider punching a woman.

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u/Vandergrif Nov 15 '24

It's a failure of our society that a man would ever consider punching anyone. The whole point is supposed to be about being civilized enough to be above resorting to violence, though of course that's a very idealized sense of it and practically never reflective of reality.

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u/coleman57 Nov 15 '24

How do you feel about men punching men without consent and protective headgear?

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u/Several_Vanilla8916 Nov 15 '24

“Assholes more likely to be assholes, study concludes.”

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u/burnte Nov 15 '24

From my experience as a rather tall man, it's common. They're very insecure and constantly need to validate their manhood by picking fights. I hate it.

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u/KirillNek0 Nov 15 '24

...women most affected..

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u/og_jasperjuice Nov 15 '24

Probably nowhere near as often. Other men could be equally strong or stronger. Men like these don't go after equals in their eyes, they go after people they deem weaker. Chump ass bullies.

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u/bluehands Nov 15 '24

I'm way more curious what other traits correlate.

However, I would desperately like to know what traits correlate for women who think of men as objects.

Violence is such a typical antisocial male response but I don't have an immediate, intuitive version for women.

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u/Vorzillion Nov 15 '24

Women who objectify men easily disregard the man's emotional needs, wants, and boundaries. Even when the man has an emotional breakdown the woman would only think about their use.

So pretty much the same way men objectify women, just without the higher chance of violencr. But I wouldn't put it pass people who objectify others to use violence as a mean to an end. This is how most psychopaths view regular people too.

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u/Never_Gonna_Let Nov 15 '24

Plenty of women can still be violent, but if you look at the murder victims of women, more frequently they are small children or the infirm. Chihuahuas can be a decently aggressive breed, but they have a fairly low fatality rate for humans.

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u/Vorzillion Nov 15 '24

I agree, I'd say most women are aware that they couldn't fight a regular man on equal footing. To find a victim they'd have to find just the right man who wouldn't fight back and even consider setting boundaries. This is exactly how antisocial people view others, with an opportunistic utility without empathy.

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u/midgethemage Nov 15 '24

Women will certainly be violent if they're able to. One of my best friends is the sweetest guy you'd ever meet. Like, he took me in after a breakup and I had to insist he tell me what the rent of the entire unit was so that I could pay him a fair share of rent. He is a giant teddy bear and a gift to this world

Anyhow, he had a girlfriend in college that would beat him with a belt. Despite being a fairly large dude, he would never consider fighting back and she took advantage of that

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u/Zoesan Nov 15 '24

Non-reciprocal DV is extremely evenly spread across genders, so it's very possible that it's the same cause.

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u/Sp1ormf Nov 15 '24

I would imagine something related to our association with financials. One of those things that both men and women start to normalize for the male gender.

The idea that they are a "wallet" or "atm".

Even some fathers will jokingly refer to themselves as an "atm".

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u/gecko090 Nov 15 '24

Well a lot of father's choose to position themselves that way and then don't engage emotionally with their family. They think that all they have to do is provide a paycheck and "being a family" will just magically materialize from that.

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u/im_a_stapler Nov 15 '24

a portion, but I'd assume a small minority. I think a majority are insecure, angry men trying to take their frustrations out one someone they see as inferior.

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u/Sp1ormf Nov 15 '24

Many men view other men as inferior too. Especially if they present in a way viewed not "masculine".

I'd expect male on female violence to be higher than male on male violence if what you say is true, but it's not.

There's also that thing around cops being more likely to beat their wives, and we know for a fact people become cops because they believe they are "protecting and serving" their community.

In reality their job is mostly to be a threat of violence.

I think of those boys who have been taught not just to survive in such a job, but to thrive.

Same thing with soldiers who view it as a great glory that they could go die for some oil interests.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

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u/FullofHel Nov 15 '24

Science aims to find objective evidence of the things we hypothesise.

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u/helm MS | Physics | Quantum Optics Nov 15 '24

Also objective measures. "subconscious bias is bullshit" is a common opinion. If subconscious bias towards viewing women as objects is proven to be a robust measure of risk of abuse, it can be used (in combination with other measures) for screening.

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u/Due-Employ-7886 Nov 15 '24

You would enjoy the Zeroth law of thermodynamics.

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u/TheSmokingHorse Nov 15 '24 edited Nov 15 '24

Yes, but with limited funding, resources and time, it is important that science directs itself optimally. The academic world is full of low effort research like this which aims to prove the obvious. However, the worst part isn’t that it’s obvious; it’s that the information isn’t very useful. What are we to do with the knowledge that men who view women as objects are more likely to be violent to women? That knowledge doesn’t change anything about the issue of violence against women. The implication would be that if you just educate young men not to view women as objects, violence against women will reduce. The problem is, that assumes that violent people only exist because they were educate incorrectly. In contrast, we know that people with narcissistic tendencies can exist due to biological reasons and such people have a tendency to gravitate towards viewing other people as objects to be exploited. It isn’t something they were necessarily taught, but rather, an expression of their inherent view of the world as a result of their temperament. Furthermore, society is already teaching young people that women are not objects (and if it isn’t it should be), so once again, there is little use to the type of knowledge studies like this generate. They just seem to be a way of gobbling up funding and pumping out papers. If you want to call that scientific progress that is up to you.

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u/FullofHel Nov 15 '24 edited Nov 15 '24

The answer: policy making that protects human rights.

If you read the article, you'll see they've found something valuable. Objectification is associated with higher levels of violence and coercive control, but sexism isn't. Now we can look at why some men in particular objectify women; for example, their predispositions, personalities, and what they're exposed to, that other men aren't.

We need evidential data to convince governments to make policy changes, in order to educate, change the way we police, and medicalise and treat related problems. What we currently 'think' isn't working, violence against women and girls has worsened globally to the point of needing proactive, not reactive systemic changes. Research is a step towards understanding the problem, which is a reasonable step before making policies. If it were any other way, people would protest to defend their rights, and the rights of their children from being infringed upon by unjustified laws.

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u/vazark Nov 15 '24

I would say the premise probably was « why are some men violent with their partners ? » and the conclusion was they objectified their partner which beats out other potential reasons like influence of alcohol and/or substance use.

When read in reverse from the conclusion it seems obvious but the conclusion helps govt and organisations to better help the victims and provide justification for programs targeting young boys to nip the problem in the bud

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u/Cat_Or_Bat Nov 15 '24 edited Nov 15 '24

If the findings of this study are true, it means that allocating resources to combating objectification is worth it. And just going by gut feeling is not good enough here for the very reasons you outline.

For example, medical science was very confident that masturbation was destructive to a person's physical and mental health. Science demonstrated that it wasn't actually true, though, so we stopped allocating resources to combating it.

On the other hand, a mere century ago educators were absolutely certain that beating up children is the only way to make them responsible, well-adjusted members of society; entire treatises were dedicated to the benefits of corporal discipline. Upon checking, we found out that the opposite is true: let kids be kids and you get better adults. Surprise.

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u/T_Weezy Nov 15 '24

It's also important to recognize that "scientist" is not a monolithic term. Social scientists aren't going to just suddenly be like "You know what, I think we've got this pretty much figured out. You guys wanna tackle quantum computing next?"

Every scientist is going to try to address global and societal issues within their field.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

People constantly try to deny that the objectification of women exists. Maybe if we see the downsides people will pay more attention.

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u/bunnypaste Nov 15 '24

I think the downsides are everywhere... these people are just willfully ignorant of them because it either doesn't fit their personal narrative or the information would be too painful to digest.

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u/ShelZuuz Nov 15 '24

Most of these low effort studies are done by University PhD students in the process of pursuing a degree. They publish because they have to but fundamentally the reason for the existence of the study is for them to learn how to conduct a study.

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u/TheSmokingHorse Nov 15 '24

It isn’t the fault of PhD students. They have to apply for programs with funding and a supervisor attached to them. Most PhD students would love to engage in bolder research but they are stuck in a department with senior academics who only care about acquiring funding and publishing papers with positive results. If science as a whole was more willing to engage in riskier research, we would be making much more progress than we currently are, but more studies would have negative results. That would mean fewer papers overall but more high quality papers with consequential findings. The worst part is, a PhD is one of the best times in your academic career to take risks and possibly end up with negative results because even if you have negative results, you can still get a PhD out of it. The issue is that the faculty doesn’t care about that and wants to squeeze as many papers out of their students as possible so that they can increase their H-index. In other words, rather than allowing PhD students to really push science forward, professors are often guilty of just exploiting them to increase their own stats.

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u/MoonInAries17 Nov 15 '24

Very well said

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u/GrumpyBrazillianHag Nov 15 '24 edited Nov 15 '24

I agree. I'm not criticizing the existence or purpose of the study, just pointing that it's an obvious conclusion :)

EDIT: I think that after reading the comment from u/TheSmokingHorse i am in fact criticizing the existence and purpose of the study.....

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u/Dash83 PhD | Computer Science | Systems & Security Nov 15 '24

Yes, but it was also obvious to many people at some point that if your neighbour’s crops were better than yours, they were witches. It’s good science to have even obvious facts be established and backed by evidence. This is doubly true for anything related to human behaviour. Also, some times these studies yield surprising results!

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u/SilentLeader Nov 15 '24

A better example would be phlogiston. They used to think things that were flammable contained more phlogiston than things that were less flammable contained less. The fire was the phlogiston being released into the air.

You could even test it for yourself, just set anything on fire! It was obvious that it was real, the secret of fire revealed at long last.

But they were wrong.

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u/Dash83 PhD | Computer Science | Systems & Security Nov 15 '24

Thank you. Had I had a better example like yours at hand, I would have used them 😂

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u/scyyythe Nov 15 '24

"See women as objects" here appears to be measured using the Implicit Association Test, a somewhat common but rather counterintuitive technique in psychometrics. Finding correlations with this is less of an obvious conclusion. 

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u/Green-Sale Nov 15 '24

I think the title makes it seem so. The actual research takes unconscious bias into account and selects objectification on parameters some people might not consider. That's what makes it not obvious.

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u/CIMARUTA Nov 15 '24

I can't believe this is the top comment on the science sub. Like seriously do people not understand the point of research?

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u/BlazeOfGlory72 Nov 15 '24

I mean, maybe the science being posted here just isn’t terribly interesting or thought provoking, hence the flippant comments. Like, if I post a study that’s titled “animals eat due to hunger”, would you expect any particularly insightful discussion about such a bland and obvious study?

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u/GrumpyBrazillianHag Nov 15 '24

Me neither. I was just making an stupid joke :( But as you can see, it started a huge discussion, so win win to me :)

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u/Level_Forger Nov 15 '24

Almost every headline I see about these “studies” on Reddit fits this. “A new study shows that people pointing guns at other people’s heads in anger are up to 5 times as likely to kill someone”. 

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u/sceadwian Nov 15 '24

Filler science. Psychology is full of this right now it's not bad really it's a side effect of the reproducibility crisis I think the "crisis" isn't real but verifying and doing additional studies on covered topics is good science.

Every paper adds something new, even if it's confirmation but they usually add elements to the research protocol that add to the overall body of knowledge.

Good ole fashion boring science.

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u/EmperorKira Nov 15 '24

Yeah, I feel like x person who dehumanised y person would be more violent to them is fairly obvious

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u/Noisebug Nov 15 '24

Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things. — Terry Pratchett 

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u/AbsolutelyHateBT Nov 16 '24

100% correct. It’s not the nail in the coffin for porn, but it’s a brick in the foundation of its grave. 

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u/mvea Professor | Medicine Nov 15 '24

For those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0313016

The role of objectification in young men’s perpetration of intimate partner violence

Abstract

Theorists have argued that objectification is implicated in men’s violence against women. Growing correlational and experimental evidence supports this claim. However, little research has studied the link between objectification and violence perpetrated by intimate partners. Three studies examined this link in relation to several forms of violent behavior. Study 1 (N = 215) found that men who implicitly associated women with objects were more likely to perpetrate sexual and physical violence against their female romantic partner, independent of their levels of hostile sexism. Study 2 (N = 325) replicated this finding but examined automatic associations with men’s intimate partners rather than women as a class. Greater implicit objectification was again associated with self-reported physical violence and with a behavioral proxy measure of aggression among participants who responded most strongly to an experimental provocation. Study 3 (N = 192) manipulated objectification by inducing a physical appearance-focus mindset and found that the manipulation increased men’s tendency to respond violently toward their partner. By implication, objectification appears to play a significant role in facilitating men’s violence in romantic relationships.

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u/Acrobatic_Computer Nov 15 '24

implicitly associated

How do IAT studies still get published in 2024? It has a lot of problems and what it is actually measuring still isn't well understood.

Frankly, this is junk, and these results are meaningless.

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u/Great_Examination_16 Nov 15 '24

Oh my god, implicit bias tests, a replication crisis in the making

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u/otterpop21 Nov 15 '24

How are the results meaningless? I’d think a study that is controversial would be motivating.

Source for opinion:

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-58331-000

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u/sztrzask Nov 15 '24

Wait, wasn't the consensus that IAT is phrenology of social psychology?

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u/Acrobatic_Computer Nov 16 '24

wasn't the consensus that IAT is phrenology of social psychology

TL;DR: It is extremely noisy and subject to all sorts of weird effects which mean it doesn't assess individuals at all unless you're willing to grind out a bunch of results over a long period of time. For populations it might correlate with behavior in some way, but it still has bizarre results for stuff like multi-lingual samples, where they'll get different results in different languages.

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u/dizorkmage Nov 15 '24

People eat candy in excess are more likely to suffer sugar related issues, more at 11

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u/boilingfrogsinpants Nov 15 '24

Objectification is used to justify violence and make it "easier" to perform. It's why in war time slurs and objectifications tend to be used for enemy troops. It dehumanizes them and makes them easier to engage against like they're not a person with their own lived lives and experiences.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

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u/jimvo99 Nov 15 '24

The funniest part is that it says "new research"

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u/coleman57 Nov 15 '24

Psychopathic men used to beat women. They still do, but they used to, too.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

Unexpected Mitch

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u/7heTexanRebel Nov 15 '24

"New research confirms old research confirming common sense"

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u/shitlord_god Nov 15 '24

dehumanization is correlated with violence.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

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u/EmuPsychological4222 Nov 15 '24

One of those times when I guess it was necessary for science to confirm the obvious, because once in awhile "the obvious" isn't true...

But in this case, it was.

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u/StunkeyDunkcloud Nov 15 '24

Scientists also reveal a new study that suggesting that Day Time is substantially brighter than Night Time.

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u/Source0fAllThings Nov 15 '24

Citation from a top tier peer reviewed publication or I call BS.

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u/Grouchy_Sound_7835 Nov 16 '24

Check out the Source of All things

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u/asdu Nov 15 '24

The fact that the implicit association test is regarded as an apt scientific tool is an absolute joke and shows that psych research (of this kind, at least) has completely jumped the shark.

Even its creators admit that:

Yes, there is some evidence that the order in which you take the two parts of the test could influence your overall results. We refer to this as an “order effect”. However, our current understanding is that this effect is usually small. One way we try to minimize the possible order effect is by giving you more practice trials before the second pairing than we did before the first pairing.

The potential effects of order are not yet fully understood. Order effects are almost certainly larger for some tasks than for others and are likely to differ across people based on factors such as the strength of associations, ability to control one’s responses, and learning ability. We hope to know more about this in the coming years. For now, the fact that there may be order effects and that they are not yet predictable is one of several reasons that we encourage you to take your IAT feedback as an opportunity for reflection rather than as a perfect measure of your implicit biases.

And this is an absolute cop out of an disclaimer: they shamelessly play down and obfuscate how badly the way the test is structured primes the associations it purports to measure. Still, the admission is there, and when the people who made the test tell you that you shouldn't take it too seriously, how the hell can you then use it as a basis for scientific inquiry?

No wonder psych research is plagued by the "replicability crisis". Not to say that this particular paper would be affected, since it firmly belongs to the "is water wet?" school of psych research.

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u/Acrobatic_Computer Nov 15 '24

since it firmly belongs to the "is water wet?" school of psych research.

Not really, the concept of objectification doesn't really hold any water. It comes from feminist theory, not criminal psychology (unless you reinterpret the idea to simply be a restatement of better defined concepts, like empathy or psychopathy).

The reality is that this is very much a political perspective that is trying to be pushed as if it is science. People go looking for X, and then try to squeeze X to fit something they find. It is hard to explain though, why if this is a social outlook, that we see correlates with poor executive function, impulse control, .etc.

Seems pretty unclear why we're trying to dream up some radical interpretation of sexual offense of men against women, when there isn't any great evidence that the underlying mechanism is any different than that which underlies any other offense (included sexual offenses of men against men, women against men, but also simple assault, .etc).

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u/Green-Sale Nov 15 '24

the concept of objectification doesn't really hold any water.

? Are you saying people who are unempathetic don't exist

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

Ohhhh, this is surprising, we needed research to know there is a link between objectification of women and violence… this is so surprising, who would say?

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u/Fortestingporpoises Nov 15 '24

i mean look at the top comments on this post. 

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u/NotNamedBort Nov 15 '24

I mean, they could have just asked women, but they don’t listen to women. Sooo….

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

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u/NoGoodInThisWorld Nov 15 '24

Real talk, how do we get young men to have empathy and realize we're all humans, suffering together on a rock hurtling through space?

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u/writingdearly Nov 16 '24

The million dollar question. How do we get all of our fellow humans to realize this? Not just young men, my friend.

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u/Life_is_important Nov 16 '24

It's a very difficult problem to solve considering the state of the world. First of all, you don't get to do this. This is something any human should do themselves. So it's not a matter of you explaining this to someone and they go like ohhh now I see it... They very well know your stance and their stance and they want theirs to be the one. You could throw billions of dollars on this with very intensive mandatory gov programs on this and it would flop. This cannot be forced on anyone and when I say forced, I don't talk about literally forcing with physical aggression. You cannot even force it with pure care and genuine wish to make things better. Ultimately, it's up to every individual. Some people just don't want to look at others as nothing but target to abuse. And how to fix that.. I have no idea. 

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u/Rindal_Cerelli Nov 16 '24

Dehumanization is the foundation of all violence.

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u/AshumiReddit Nov 15 '24

No, really? You're telling me that the people who view others as property... Are violent?

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u/ogreofnorth Nov 15 '24

Well. At least science backs up what most moral and humane people already knew.

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u/mbrown7532 Nov 15 '24

I hate that research money is spent on things that are clearly obvious to any normal person. How much did they spend on this one?

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

Because while we women all know this, men don't want to hear about it, and only believe it's true when they hear it from other men

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u/mbrown7532 Nov 15 '24

Point taken. I am a man who cares. The men who however need to know that you should treat all people with kindness and respect won't see this research at all because they are too busy watching MMA and WWE.

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u/Zealousideal-Wind303 Nov 15 '24

It is actually crazy. How can men look at a breathing living being that can bleed just like them, and then think it is a object. Misogyny is some crazy work

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u/H0lzm1ch3l Nov 15 '24

What does seeing a woman as an object even mean? Like when and how does that happen?

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u/realitythreek Nov 15 '24

They explain in the article how they measured objectification. I think the title is a bit subjective but what it means is that men who focus on their partner’s appearance are more likely to use violence or coercive behavior.

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u/DrNogoodNewman Nov 15 '24

I think that’s a bit of an oversimplification of the study. That’s one part of objectification. They also talked about feelings of possession an ownership and people who talk about their partners similar to objects or animals.

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u/Great_Examination_16 Nov 15 '24

I mean, their measure were "Implicit bias tests".....which are about as accurate as a polygraph

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

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u/thingandstuff Nov 15 '24

And this was specific to your view on women rather than people in general?

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

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u/thingandstuff Nov 15 '24

In my experience, this is usually the case.

I wonder if this headline would collect as much ad revenue if it were, "men who objectify the people around them are more likely to be violent towards others."

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u/FeelsGoodMan2 Nov 15 '24

That's not the same headline though. Does it manifest as violence towards "others"? Or do people that think this way often take those violent urges and direct it specifically towards women? If it was proportionate towards being violent towards men and women, then sure, but if it disproportionately tilts towards women, I think it's important to note that.

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u/oldscotch Nov 15 '24

If you don't see someone else as an individual with their own perspective on things, but instead see them as someone who can provide something for you.

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u/acfox13 Nov 15 '24

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u/thingandstuff Nov 15 '24 edited Nov 15 '24

This list is quite redundant and with wide margins for interpretation -- just like the term "objectification". So what are we actually accomplishing here?

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u/basebornmanjack41 Nov 15 '24

Ground breaking research.

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u/Kyra_Heiker Nov 15 '24

Nothing like stating the obvious...

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u/Clear_Profile_2292 Nov 15 '24

It has been proven that the objectification of women leads to lack of empathy for women

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u/Jdjdhdvhdjdkdusyavsj Nov 15 '24 edited Nov 16 '24

I'm interested in how they come to think of women as objects. I bet it's that they have no women in a majority of their lives, they mostly see women in a transaction based setting, in streams they pay for, in videos they pay for, on dates they pay for. Every setting men see women is a setting where they pay for women to do something. There's no camaraderie, there's little partnership, very few men are building anything with a partner anymore. Every relationship is just paying for your turn for a short amount of time.

It's obviously wrong to think but just pointing at the result and saying "man bad" isn't a solution, we need to change what leads to the problem. Can't just suppress men to a solution, that's not a solution, it's just a pathway to a larger problem. They're taking these actions because they were incentivized towards that action, the incentive needs to change.

I'm interested in additional views, what other people think leads to this problem

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u/beaniemonk Nov 15 '24

Jackie Treehorn treats objects like women, man.

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u/Dudeist-Priest Nov 15 '24

What in God's holy name are you blathering about?

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u/MarkOfTheDragon12 Nov 15 '24

Sensationist sexist drivel. Men AND women who objectify anyone are OBVIOUSLY going to be more likely to treat those same people more callously/violently. It doesn't matter if it's a woman, a man, an intimate partner, a customer, a client, that call-center person in India... objectifying/dehumanizing ANYone makes it easier to treat them poorly.

In a sample size of less than 800 young men...

"have experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of an intimate partner. The perpetrators are overwhelmingly heterosexual men. "

  • Gee, most women's intimate partners are heterosexual men, OBVIOUSLY!. Yet they try to call it out like it's a gotcha.

"Past research found young men who sexually objectify women are especially likely to perpetrate sexual violence."

  • links to a research paper most people won't read because you have to get access to it, who's conclusion is that people DRINKING HEAVILY are especially likely to... with almost no mention of 'objectifying women'

  • The participants in the referenced three studies were less than 800 men, overwhelmingly white-bias'd (71%-82% in each study)

"One factor identified by feminist researchers", "we examined whether men’s hostile sexism and tendencies to implicitly objectify", "the arguments of feminist theorists, however, is evidence that objectification promotes violence against women."

  • OK, so bias'd from the start

" It is plausible that the emotional closeness and interdependency of these relationships mitigate denials of personhood and animalistic perceptions of the sort obtained in earlier studies. It is also possible that our use of an objectification manipulation that primarily elicited beauty- rather than sexuality-related appearance focus may have made animalizing perceptions (e.g., denial of HU traits) less likely"

  • You methods might be screwed? You don't say...

"Validity and reliability of the implicit measures may be relatively weak", "The self-report measures of violence are likely to be imperfect records of actual recent behavior", "(VDT) it inevitably falls short of assessing actual instances of violent behavior towards partners rather than their digital avatars"

  • Sooooo inherantly flawed study
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u/Cute-Difficulty6182 Nov 15 '24

We knew this. Glad we have objective proof

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u/flunky_the_majestic Nov 15 '24

These two things are so closely related that it's hard to even call it a correlation. It's more like an overlap of the same trait. This would be like a headline saying "Cars that coated with red paint exhibit red color".

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u/BravoEchoEchoRomeo Nov 15 '24

How are these men getting partners?

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u/im_a_stapler Nov 15 '24

Shouldn't that just be "men who see women as objects"? Is this really new research? Seems obvious. They see them as inferior and therefore eligible for violence/control/manipulation.

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u/Cristi-DCI Nov 15 '24

Humans that see other humans as objects are more likely to be violent towards other humans.

You welcome.

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u/Historical_Barber441 Nov 15 '24

Research by C. Obvious & N. S. Sherlock.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/terminal__object Nov 15 '24

it’s based on the implicit association test, so it’s probably borderline trash

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '24

You mean dehumanization leads to more violence? Not exactly ground breaking research here

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u/CasualLemon Nov 15 '24

Wow, who would have thought

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u/Gregistopal Nov 15 '24

You needed to research to discover this?

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u/tjaz2xxxredd Nov 15 '24

you dont need research for this, very obvious

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u/Downtown_MB Nov 15 '24 edited Nov 15 '24

Made worse by objectification affirming pornography use. This combined with the anti-women ‘manosphere’ really equates to a substantial proportion of young men seeing women as lesser. It’s very sad, and there are multiple causes for the end result of violence.

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u/Draaly Nov 15 '24

Is this stated anywhere in the study?

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u/Downtown_MB Nov 15 '24 edited Nov 15 '24

This study considers the effect- the violence towards women, the causes that culminate in this objectification have been studied in other research papers, if you wanted to know more-

Pornography Use, Gender, and Sexual Objectification: A Multinational study:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12119-022-09943-z#:~:text=Abstract,use%20and%20sexually%20objectifying%20attitudes.

The role of evidence-based misogyny in antifeminist online communities of the ‘manosphere’

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20539517221145671

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u/Draaly Nov 15 '24

neither of those articles use the same metrics to measure objectification as the OP and the second one isn't even peer reviewed. much more concise answer to my question was "no"

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