Who tends to perceive other people as useful objects? The relationship between the general tendency to objectify other people and basic and dark personality traits.

Abstract

Background: Objectification involves perceiving and instrumentally treating other people as mere tools useful for satisfying the perceiver's goals. While several situational factors facilitating objectification have been identified, only a few studies have examined personal predictors of objectification. To find out more about personality correlates of the objectifying approach towards other people, we examined its relationship with basic and dark personality traits.

Participants and procedure: The sample comprised 372 participants (222 women), ranging in age from 18 to 55 years (M = 34.14, SD = 8.48). To measure study variables, we used a modified version of the Objectification Scale (objectification), the IPIP-BFM-20 (Big Five personality dimensions), DTDD-P (dark personality traits of Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy), HSNS (vulnerable narcissism), PES (psychological entitlement), IES (interpersonal exploitativeness), PRNS (positive reciprocity norms), and NRNS (negative reciprocity norms).

Results: We found that, when controlling for other personality variables and demographics, agreeableness, intellect, and a tendency to use positive norms of reciprocity negatively predicted objectification, and exploitativeness and entitlement were positively associated with the general tendency to objectify others.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that a propensity for objectification is predicted by an unwillingness to maintain positive relationships with others, lower intellectual openness, higher entitlement and exploitativeness, and low tendency to positively respond to others' favors. The associations with these personality traits may allow for better understanding of - typical for objectification - high focus on fulfilling one's own interests and readiness to exploit others while disregarding their interests and ignoring human attributes such as subjectivity and uniqueness.