Stop looking at me! associations between men's partner-objectification and women's self-objectification, body shame and life satisfaction in romantic relationships

A growing amount of empirical evidence shows that sexual objectification can be elicited within the context of romantic relationships, leading to adverse consequences for women's well-being. However, most of this research assessed women's self-reported perceptions of being objectified by their romantic partner, while scant and not converging research has considered men's objectifying perceptions toward their romantic partners. Furthermore, little is known about the underlying mechanisms through which partner-objectification is associated with negative consequences for women. To fill these gaps, we involved a sample of heterosexual couples (N = 196) and investigated whether men's partner-objectification would be related to women's self-objectification (in terms of self-surveillance) and, in turn, their body shame. Further, we examined whether self-objectification and body shame mediated the relation between men's partner-objectification and women's undermined life satisfaction. Confirming our hypotheses, serial mediation analyses showed that partner-objectification was associated with life satisfaction in women via the indirect effect of self-objectification and body shame. Implications of these findings for literature on sexual objectification and relationship satisfaction are discussed. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement