Entitled and exploitative people are more likely to treat others as objects, study finds

A study in Poland found that people who are agreeable, intellectually curious, and who endorse positive norms of reciprocity were less likely to objectify others. In contrast, those prone to exploiting others and individuals with greater feelings of entitlement were more likely to objectify others. The research was published in Current Issues in Personality Psychology.

Objectification of people is the act of treating a person primarily as an object rather than as a full human being with thoughts, feelings, and autonomy. It involves reducing someone to their body, appearance, usefulness, or a single trait (or set of traits) while ignoring their individuality. Objectification is most commonly discussed in relation to sexual objectification, but it can also occur in workplaces, politics, or everyday social interactions.

People objectify others for several reasons, including social norms that emphasize status, beauty, or productivity over inner qualities. Media and advertising frequently reinforce objectification by portraying people as products to be evaluated or consumed. Psychologically, objectification can simplify social perception by reducing complex individuals into easier categories. It may also serve power dynamics, as seeing someone as an object can make it easier to control, exploit, or dismiss them.

Study author Kinga Lachowicz-Tabaczek and her colleagues wanted to identify personality characteristics associated with a general tendency to objectify other people. They defined objectification as a tendency to perceive others, regardless of the context, in a reduced, instrumental, and dehumanized way. “Instrumental” here means perceiving individuals only as useful objects, while “dehumanized” means perceiving them as non-subjects, devoid of subjectivity and uniqueness.

Study participants were 372 Polish adults from the Ariadna Research Panel, an online survey platform that allows researchers to collect data primarily in the fields of market research and social sciences. Participants’ average age was 34 years. Of the participants, 222 were women.

Participants completed an online survey containing assessments of the general tendency to objectify people (a modified Objectification Scale), the Big Five personality traits (the International Personality Item Pool – Big Five Factor Markers – 20), the Dark Triad personality traits (the Dirty Dozen scale), vulnerable narcissism (the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale), psychological entitlement (the Psychological Entitlement Scale), interpersonal exploitativeness (the Interpersonal Exploitativeness Scale), and norms of reciprocity (the positive and negative reciprocity norms subscales of the Personal Norm of Reciprocity Questionnaire).

Results showed that people with more pronounced traits of agreeableness, as well as those who endorsed positive reciprocity norms, were less likely to objectify others. Individuals who were more intellectually curious (the trait of intellect) were also less prone to objectifying others, though this association was relatively weak. Agreeableness is a personality trait reflecting compassion, trust, and concern for others, while the endorsement of positive reciprocity norms refers to the belief that people should return kindness and benefits received from others with similar positive actions.

On the other hand, individuals who were more exploitative, felt more entitled, and had more pronounced dark personality traits were more likely to objectify others. Exploitativeness refers to a tendency to take advantage of others for personal gain, while entitlement is the belief that one deserves special treatment, privileges, or rewards regardless of merit or effort.

The dark personality traits assessed in this study were narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism—collectively known as the Dark Triad—as well as vulnerable narcissism. Narcissism is characterized by grandiosity, a strong need for admiration, and a sense of superiority over others. Machiavellianism involves manipulativeness, strategic calculation, and a focus on self-interest with little regard for morality. Psychopathy is marked by impulsivity, callousness, low empathy, and a lack of remorse for harmful behavior.

Participants more prone to objectifying others were also more likely to endorse negative reciprocity norms. Negative reciprocity norms are beliefs that people should retaliate or return harm when they are treated unfairly or wronged by others. Additionally, men were slightly more prone to objectifying others than women.

Further statistical analyses found that it was only agreeableness, endorsement of positive reciprocity norms, intellect, exploitativeness, entitlement, and gender that contributed independently to predicting the proneness to objectify others. When all traits were analyzed together, the remaining dark personality traits (like psychopathy and Machiavellianism) did not improve the prediction, suggesting that exploitativeness and entitlement are the core drivers of this behavior.

“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 study authors concluded.

The study sheds light on the psychological underpinnings of the proneness to objectify others. However, it should be noted that the correlational design of the study does not allow any causal inferences to be made from these results.

The paper, “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,” was authored by Kinga Lachowicz-Tabaczek, Beata E. Andrzejewska, Anna Juszkiewicz, and Jolanta Babiak.