Objects of Desire: The Role of Sexual Arousal in the Sexual Objectification of Women by Men

The detrimental effects of sexual objectification on women's psychological and physical well-being are well established, yet little is known about the proximal mechanisms that lead men to objectify women. In the present research, we introduced and found support for the Arousal Hypothesis of Sexual Objectification, which posits that, beyond dispositional traits (e.g. personality), temporary states of sexual arousal increase the sexual objectification of women. Across four experiments (N = 675), we found consistent evidence that heightened sexual arousal increases sexual objectification in men. In Experiment 1, sexually aroused men showed a greater preference for women's sexual physical attributes (e.g. curvy, sexy) over psychological attributes (e.g. empathy, intelligence), as assessed by a novel State Sexual Objectification (SSO) task. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this effect occurred only for sexualized physical attributes rather than physical attributes more generally. Experiments 3 and 4 established convergent validity between the SSO task and trait objectification measures. Critically, Experiment 4 revealed that the effect of sexual arousal on objectification was attenuated by induced empathy, but only when controlling for Dark Triad traits. This more tentative finding indicates that empathy-based interventions could be promising, but their effectiveness may depend on men's underlying dispositional traits. Across all studies, neither personality traits (Dark Triad, Social Dominance Orientation, Sociosexual Orientation) nor relationship status moderated the arousal-objectification link. These findings identify sexual arousal as a robust, state-based contributor to sexual objectification, offering new insights into when and why men objectify women and avenues for context-sensitive interventions.