You’re standing in a crowded grocery store line when the person behind you starts huffing. They aren't looking at you as a human with a back story, a tired commute, or a family waiting at home. To them, in that high-stress moment, you are just a "barrier." You are an obstacle between them and their dinner. That right there? That’s the simplest, most common version of what objectification means in our daily lives.
It’s a heavy word. Usually, we associate it with glossy magazine covers or the way Hollywood treats starlets, but it’s actually a much broader psychological phenomenon. At its core, objectification happens when we strip away someone’s "personhood"—their feelings, their history, their right to say no—and replace it with a single function. They become a tool. A decoration. A data point on a spreadsheet.
The Seven Ways We Turn People Into Things
Back in the mid-90s, Martha Nussbaum, a philosopher who really knew her stuff, broke this down into specific behaviors. She didn't just say "it’s bad." She looked at the mechanics of it. Honestly, when you read her list, you realize you've probably done this to someone else, and you’ve definitely had it done to you.
She talked about instrumentality, which is the most common form. This is when you treat a person as a tool for your own purposes. Think of a boss who doesn't care if an employee is sick, only that the "resource" isn't producing units. Then there’s denial of autonomy. This is when we act as if a person lacks the right to self-determine. We see this in overbearing parenting or even in toxic relationships where one partner treats the other like a piece of furniture they can move around at will.
There is also inertness (treating someone as if they lack agency) and fungibility. That last one is a fancy way of saying "replaceable." If you think one "assistant" is just as good as any other and don't care about their individual soul, you're fungifying them. It’s cold. It’s weirdly common in the corporate world. Nussbaum also noted violability, where someone is treated as if it's okay to break into their personal space or "smash" them, and ownership, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Does it always involve bodies?
Short answer: no.
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While sexual objectification is the version that gets the most headlines—and for good reason, because it’s pervasive—you can objectify someone's intellect or their labor too. If a political party views a specific demographic only as "votes to be harvested" rather than a community of individuals with complex needs, that is objectification. If a "hustle culture" influencer tells you to view your friends only as "networking assets," they are asking you to objectify your social circle.
Why Our Brains Love a Shortcut
Humans are kinda lazy. Our brains have to process an insane amount of data every second. To cope, we use heuristics—mental shortcuts. Sometimes, we accidentally apply these shortcuts to people.
Social psychology calls this "dehumanization," and it’s the dark side of objectification. Research by Susan Fiske and Lasana Harris at Princeton University used fMRI scans to show something pretty chilling. When people were shown images of "low-status" individuals—like the homeless or drug addicts—the part of the brain that usually fires up when we think about other people (the medial prefrontal cortex) stayed quiet. For those observers, the brain was processing those humans the same way it processes a fire hydrant or a piece of trash.
It's a glitch in our empathy.
The Digital Echo Chamber
Social media has made this way worse. Think about it. When you're scrolling through TikTok or Instagram, you aren't interacting with a person. You’re interacting with a 15-second "content delivery system."
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The "Influencer" becomes an object of envy or a target for rage. Because we don't see them breathing, sweating, or crying in real-time, it’s easy to leave a comment that treats them like a non-player character (NPC) in a video game. This digital distance creates a buffer that makes objectification feel natural. It’s why people feel comfortable "demanding" more content from a creator who is clearly burnt out. They aren't a person anymore; they’re a Netflix subscription that stopped working.
The Real-World Fallout
What does objectification mean for the person on the receiving end? It isn't just "hurt feelings."
Studies in the Psychology of Women Quarterly have shown that self-objectification—where you start seeing yourself through the eyes of others—leads to massive spikes in anxiety and depression. When you start monitoring your body or your "output" as if you were an outsider looking in, you lose touch with your internal state. You stop asking "How do I feel?" and start asking "How do I look?" or "How productive am I being?"
It’s exhausting. It’s like being a spectator at your own life.
The Power Dynamic
We can't talk about this without talking about power. Objectification is almost always a downward pressure. People in power objectify those with less power to make it easier to ignore their suffering. It’s how wars are sold. It’s how sweatshops are justified. If the person on the other side of the transaction is just a "labor cost," you don't have to worry about their dignity.
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Finding the Way Back to Personhood
So, how do we stop? Or at least, how do we do it less?
It starts with "subjectification." That sounds like a boring academic term, but it’s actually beautiful. It’s the act of consciously acknowledging that every person you encounter has a "hidden interiority." They have dreams you’ll never know about. They have a favorite song. They have a childhood memory of a scraped knee.
When you’re stuck in traffic and you’re mad at the driver in front of you, try to remember they probably have a bag of melting groceries in the trunk or a sick kid in the back seat. That shift—from seeing a "car" to seeing a "person driving a car"—is the antidote.
Actionable Steps to Combat Objectification
If you're feeling like you’ve been treating people as tools (or you feel like a tool yourself), here is how to break the cycle.
- Practice "The Inner Life" Assumption. Whenever you feel frustrated with a stranger, tell yourself one specific, imagined detail about their life. "That guy cutting me off probably really needs to find a bathroom." It breaks the "object" spell.
- Audit Your Language. Stop calling your employees "resources." Stop calling your dates "options." Use words that imply agency and humanity.
- Audit Your Social Media Consumption. If you find yourself getting angry at "content," put the phone down. Go talk to a neighbor or a barista. Remind your brain what a three-dimensional human looks like.
- Check Your Self-Talk. Are you treating your own body like a machine that needs to be "fixed" or "optimized"? Shift the focus to how your body feels and what it can do, rather than how it appears to an imaginary audience.
- Demand Nuance. In your politics and your social life, resist the urge to put people in boxes. Boxes are for things. People are messy, contradictory, and rarely fit into a 280-character summary.
The goal isn't to be a perfect saint who never loses their temper. That's impossible. The goal is to catch yourself when you start sliding into that "thing-oriented" mindset. The moment you realize you're treating someone as a means to an end is the moment you can choose to see them as a human again. It takes work. It’s worth it.