Objectification: seeing and treating other people as objects

Palazzo Fedrigotti - corso Bettini, 31 - Rovereto, Italy

Objectification represents a powerful and potentially damaging way in which we can see and treat others. When people become tools, instruments, or objects of our appreciation they can lose out on their humanity, inner mental life, and sometimes even moral standing. This objectification can have a sexual element - sexualized women and men become objects of our sexual attention. However, objectification goes beyond the sexual sphere; it can be the worker or the boss, the patient or the practitioner who becomes the object. Objectification - reducing a someone to a something - can occur in any human relationship.

Despite this importance and breadth, the interpersonal aspects of objectification and its connections to morality, dehumanization, motivation, and social cognition have only recently received social psychological attention. We aim to draw on this attention, hosting a comprehensive and broad summary of the psychology of objectification. This could include work on the causes of objectification (e.g., media, parenting, evolution), the nature of objectification in different domains (e.g., sex, gender, work, healthcare), the socio-cognitive processes of objectification (e.g., visual attention, memory, communication) and the consequences of objectification (e.g., aggression, control, sexism).

Partecipation

The current event is a small group meeting that aims to gather around 30 experienced and early career researchers that are currently investigating objectification processes. We have reached the maximum number of participants and speakers. Therefore, no new applications can be considered.

Programme

The programme is available here updated 18 may.
The poster of the workshop is available here.

How to reach us

The venue of the workshop is Palazzo Fedrigotti, Corso Bettini 31, just a 10 minute walk from the train station. For information on how to get to Rovereto, click here and the map of Rovereto, click here. In the download box there are some information about airport directions to Rovereto.

Accomodation

Some rooms have been reserved for workshop participants at favourable prices (in agreement with the hotels and the University of Trento) for the nights from the 10th to 14th of June 2015. Please click here for more information.

Scientific Organizers

• Steve Loughnan - School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences - University of Edinburgh (UK)
• Jeroen Vaes - Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences University of Trento (Italy)

Contacts

• Jeroen Vaes: jeroen.vaes [at] unitn.it
• Steve Loughnan: steve.loughnan [at] ed.ac.uk
• Staff for Communication – Rovereto: comunicazione-rovereto [at] unitn.it

With the support of: