Income inequality and status concerns in multiple life domains increase self-objectification for both women and men

Self-objectification—viewing one's worth through physical appearance—has detrimental effects. It is typically explained by heteronormative conditions and female sexual objectification, but we propose that it can also stem from economic conditions and status concerns. Experiment 1 manipulated economic inequality and shows that it increases self-objectification directly and indirectly through status anxiety in multiple life domains. These domains were reducible to appearance, parenting, material, and life achievement status anxieties; all except parenting robustly increased self-objectification. Experiment 2 manipulated economic inequality and status anxiety in three domains (career success, appearance success, control). Both manipulations predicted self-objectification but did not interact, indicating an independent path between status concerns and self-objectification. While career success reduced self-objectification, appearance success reinforced rather than alleviated it. Appearance success also reduced some socioeconomic status anxieties but increased educational status concerns, indicating that appearance behaviors like self-objectification can provide a sense of status in multiple areas of life, despite being non-optimal overall. Across both experiments, effects were robust to controls and vastly few sex or gender differences emerged. Locating self-objectification within broader status-seeking processes clarifies its persistence even as patriarchal norms lessen and reveals that these processes are only weakly gendered, challenging prevailing theories and highlighting new avenues for intervention.