Daily Sexual Objectification Experiences, Craving, and Alcohol Use Among Women Sexual Assault Survivors: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

Abstract

Objective

Women who have experienced sexual assault report higher rates of alcohol use. Sexual objectification experiences, such as sexualized body gazes, gestures, commentary, and physical contact, have been linked with greater alcohol use and may represent a particular stressor for women who have experienced sexual assault, potentially leading to craving and alcohol use to cope. This study used a three-week ecological momentary assessment design to test whether experiencing sexual objectification indirectly predicted the likelihood of later alcohol use through heightened craving. Further, because sexual minority women may be disproportionately targeted by objectification and are more likely to report alcohol misuse, we explored whether sexual minority women experienced more objectification than heterosexual women and, in turn, greater craving and alcohol use.

Method

Participants were 82 cisgender women sexual assault survivors reporting probable alcohol misuse and posttraumatic stress symptoms who were predominantly heterosexual and bisexual. Participants reported on daily objectification experiences and momentary craving each evening, as well as past-day alcohol use each morning. A multilevel structural equation model was estimated in Mplus.

Results

As hypothesized, there was an indirect effect of experiencing objectification on a given day on later alcohol use endorsement via greater alcohol craving. There was not an indirect effect of sexual minority identity on average alcohol use frequency via objectification and craving, but sexual minority women experienced greater average craving than heterosexual women.

Conclusions

Findings support daily objectification experiences as a novel proximal risk factor for heightened craving and drinking among sexual assault survivors with diverse sexual identities.

Disentangling the relation between experiences of sexual assault (i.e., sexual contact that is unwanted or occurs without consent) among women and future alcohol misuse (i.e., drinking in a manner, amount, or frequency likely to cause harm) is a public health priority, given the alarming prevalence and co-occurrence of these events. Women who have experienced sexual assault report heavier alcohol use, including higher daily (Stappenbeck et al., 2023) and weekly alcohol use (Parks et al., 2014). Moreover, sexual minority women (e.g., lesbian, bisexual, queer women) are disproportionately targeted for sexual assault (Canan et al., 2021), report greater alcohol misuse (Hughes et al., 2014), and greater drinking related to sexual assault compared to heterosexual women (Hughes et al., 2020; Rhew et al., 2017). Despite these well-documented associations, less is known about proximal predictors of alcohol use among heterosexual and sexual minority women survivors. Identifying daily processes underlying alcohol use is critical to inform effective and timely interventions for mitigating alcohol misuse.

Sexual Objectification and Alcohol Use

One of the dominant models for understanding heightened alcohol use after sexual assault is the self-medication hypothesis, which posits substance use as motivated by desires to attenuate distress (Hawn et al., 2020; Khantzian, 1997; Miranda et al., 2002). Because sexual assault innately involves treating someone like an object and violating their autonomy, one stressor that may particularly elicit distress among sexual assault survivors is sexual objectification. Sexual objectification is the act of reducing a person to the status of an object for sexual gratification (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) by focusing on physical and sexual attributes while neglecting their humanity (Nussbaum, 1995). Sexual objectification is pervasive and often enacted through interpersonal interactions, from overt unwanted sexual advances to subtler body evaluation expressed through objectifying gazes and commentary (Kozee et al., 2007; Ward et al., 2023). Young adult women face frequent objectification, occurring three times per week on average (Holland et al., 2017; Koval et al., 2019). These overt and subtle instances of sexual objectification may trigger stress, especially among sexual assault survivors as objectification may remind them of their assault and past treatment as a sexual object. Indeed, objectification predicts psychological distress and health consequences (e.g., depression, eating disorders; Carr & Szymanski, 2011).

Emerging research points to alcohol use as another potential health outcome of objectification experiences among women. Women who experience more sexual objectification report more frequent and heavier drinking (Baildon et al., 2021). Further, objectification experiences are indirectly associated with greater motivation to drink to cope through greater body shame (Baildon et al., 2021), as well as alcohol and drug use via greater self-objectification, body shame, and depressive symptoms (Carr & Szymanski, 2011). These links suggest women may use alcohol to manage negative internal states elicited by objectification, as would be suggested by the self-medication model.

Craving as a Potential Mechanism

Findings that objectification may heighten distress and lead to drinking among women who have experienced sexual assault raise questions about mechanisms that may account for this linkage. One potentially important mechanism to examine is craving. Links between stress and alcohol craving are well-established. Craving is higher following personalized stress imagery scripts compared to neutral scripts, especially among those who report heavy drinking (Bresin et al., 2018), while higher craving predicts greater laboratory alcohol use (Blaine et al., 2019). Similarly, laboratory stress-induced alcohol craving predicts more frequent and heavier alcohol use (Sinha, 2009). Findings from naturalistic studies parallel these laboratory-based findings; heightened perceived stress predicts greater craving and, in turn, heavier drinking that night among adults with average to heavy alcohol use (Wemm et al., 2022). If these findings generalize to objectification as a specific interpersonal stressor, experiences of objectification may lead to craving for alcohol and, in turn, same-day drinking.

Sexual Minority Women

Another critical gap in our understanding of the link between sexual objectification and alcohol use is that research has relied on samples of primarily heterosexual women. Sexual minority women (SMW) may be subject to objectification in both overlapping (e.g., body gazes, appearance commentary, unwanted sexual contact) and distinct ways (e.g., fetishization, hyper-sexualization, treatment as an experiment) from heterosexual women because of their social location within heterosexism and other systems of oppression (Serpe et al., 2020; Tebbe et al., 2018). Perpetrators of objectification may be more likely to deny the autonomy of SMW (e.g., being capable of self-identifying as non-heterosexual) or perceive them as more violable (e.g., facing higher rates of sexual assault or other forms of violence), which are components of objectifying treatment (Tebbe et al., 2018). However, few studies have examined differences in objectification experiences across diverse sexual identities. Some initial studies suggest objectification is more prominent among certain subgroups of sexual minority women. For example, qualitative research suggests plurisexual women experience more objectification than monosexual women, which may arise from antibisexual+ discrimination (Serpe et al., 2020), and Black queer women report more frequent objectification experiences than Black heterosexual women (Thorpe et al., 2024), reflecting the importance of intersectionality. Yet, other studies have found no such differences in the rates of objectification between heterosexual and lesbian women (Engeln-Maddox et al., 2011; Hill & Fischer, 2008; Kozee & Tylka, 2006). Due to these mixed findings, firm predictions are not able to be made as to whether sexual minority and heterosexual women experience different rates of sexual objectification.

In addition, risk for alcohol misuse is disproportionately high among SMW, which is thought to be driven by minority stressors including high rates of sexual assault (Hughes et al., 2014). Many SMW endorse alcohol use to regulate stress (Condit et al., 2011). Like heterosexual women, the association between stressful events and alcohol use may occur indirectly through craving. Experiences of stigma (e.g., microaggressions, heterosexism) predict greater motivations to drink to cope and craving among SMW and girls (Dyar et al., 2021; Mereish & Miranda Jr., 2019; Parnes et al., 2023). More research is needed to understand whether disproportionate exposure to objectifying experiences may contribute to alcohol use among SMW.

Study Overview and Aims

Women who have experienced sexual assault report greater alcohol use than women without a history of sexual assault, but acute predictors of daily drinking behaviors remain poorly understood. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) designs offer an ecologically valid method of examining processes as they occur in women’s natural environments over time. This study uses a three-week EMA study of 82 cisgender women sexual assault survivors reporting probable alcohol misuse and posttraumatic stress symptoms to test the primary hypothesis that experiencing sexual objectification on a given day would predict greater craving and, in turn, alcohol use later that day among sexual assault survivors, in line with the self-medication model. In addition, we explored whether SMW would report more frequent objectification and, in turn, greater craving and more frequent alcohol use on average. Given the mixed literature on objectification frequency across heterosexual and SMW (Engeln-Maddox et al., 2011; Thorpe et al., 2024), this was an exploratory aim.

Method

Participants

All procedures were approved by the university’s IRB. Participants were 82 women sexual assault survivors (M_age= 22.8, SD = 3.2). Several inclusion criteria were required for participation in the larger study from which these data were drawn (Brockdorf et al., 2024). Specifically, participants had to be aged 18 to 30 (a period of heightened risk for alcohol use and sexual assault; Basile et al., 2022; Kanny et al., 2018) and identify as women. Although trans women were eligible to participate, all participants identified as cisgender. Participants had to have experienced sexual assault since the age of 14 (i.e., endorsement of at least one of 14 behaviorally specific items assessing unwanted oral sex or penetration, Messman-Moore et al., 2010), endorse multiple posttraumatic stress symptoms associated with sexual assault (i.e., score of six or more on the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5; Blevins et al., 2015), and endorse probable alcohol misuse based on a score of three or more on the AUDIT-C (Bush et al., 1998). Participants could not be pregnant or planning to become pregnant (due to our interest in alcohol use) and needed to own a cell phone to complete EMA surveys. All participants from the larger collection (N = 82) were retained. Demographic characteristics are in Table 1.

Table 1.

Demographic Characteristics and Types of Objectification Experiences Reported During EMA

Category	n (%)
Sexual Orientation
Heterosexual	46 (56.1%)
Bisexual	25 (30.5%)
Queer	4 (4.9%)
Lesbian	3 (3.7%)
Pansexual	3 (3.7%)
Unsure	1 (1.2%)
Race/Ethnicity
White, non-Hispanic	60 (73.2%)
Hispanic/Latina	11 (13.4%)
Black/African American	8 (9.8%)
Biracial or multiracial	5 (6.1%)
American Indian/Alaska Native/Indigenous/Native American	4 (4.9%)
Asian	2 (2.4%)
Middle Eastern/Arab	2 (2.4%)
Student Status
Full time student	37 (45.1%)
Not a student	29 (35.4%)
Student in a graduate, technical, or professional school	13 (15.9%)
Part-time student	2 (2.4%)
Objectification Experiences
Sexualizing body gazes	41 (50.0%)
Sexual remarks	25 (30.5%)
Catcalling/whistling/car honking	20 (24.4%)
Degrading sexual gestures	9 (11.0%)
Touched/fondled against will	9 (11.0%)

Procedures

Women were recruited from a Midwestern city using community and online flyers. Eligible participants completed baseline measures and a 21-day EMA period. Three daily self-report surveys were sent via SMS with a REDCap link (Harris et al., 2009) at randomized times between 9:00–10:00 AM (morning), 1:00–2:00 PM (afternoon), and 5:00–6:00 PM (evening). This study used data collected during the morning and evening but not afternoon survey. Participants also wore wrist devices measuring sleep (i.e., actigraphs); actigraphy data are beyond the scope of this study. Participants could earn up to $166 for completion of study procedures.

Measures

Baseline

Sexual Orientation.

Participants indicated their sexual orientation during baseline measures (Table 1). Approximately half (56.1%) identified as heterosexual and were recoded as 0 (did not identify as a sexual minority). All other responses were coded as 1 (identified as a sexual minority).

EMA Measures

Objectification.

At each evening survey, participants indicated whether they had experienced several forms of sexual objectification that day (Holland et al., 2017). Items were adapted from the Interpersonal Sexual Objectification Scale (Kozee et al., 2007) for EMA use by Holland and colleagues (2017). Participants could select as many of the following objectifying options as applied to them that day: catcalling, wolf-whistling, or car honking; sexual remark made about body; touched/fondled against will; body looked at sexually; degrading sexual gesture. Consistent with Holland and colleagues (2017), a dichotomous variable was created to indicate whether participants experienced (1) or did not experience (0) any objectification that day. If participants indicated they initiated drinking before they completed the evening survey (n = 15 days where objectification was endorsed), objectification experiences were recoded to 0 to isolate occurrences before drinking onset; as a sensitivity analysis, the pattern of findings did not change if these 15 occurrences were recoded as missing instead.

Craving.

At each evening survey, a single item was used to assess craving for alcohol (Lane et al., 2016). Instructions were adapted to assess current craving: “Please rate the degree to which you are craving alcohol/have an urge to drink right now.” Responses were provided on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely). If participants indicated they initiated drinking before the evening survey, craving data were recoded to missing to isolate craving before drinking onset.

Alcohol Use.

At each morning survey, a single item was used to assess whether participants drank the previous day: “Did you consume alcohol yesterday from the time you woke up until the time you fell asleep?” Response options were yes (1) and no (0). Participants who endorsed alcohol use were then asked what time they began drinking. This variable was used to isolate objectification and craving occurring before drinking onset.

Data Analytic Plan

Data analyses were conducted in Mplus Version 8.11 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2017). Descriptive statistics, bivariate correlations, and a multilevel structural equation model (MSEM) were estimated. Sexual orientation was measured at Level 2 (between-person). Sexual objectification experiences, craving, and alcohol use were measured at Level 1 (within-person). All Level 1 variables were decomposed using latent mean centering. At the between-person level, a serial mediation model was estimated to test the exploratory aim involving the indirect effect of sexual minority identity on alcohol use through sexual objectification and craving on average across the EMA period. At the within-person level, a mediation model was estimated to test the hypothesis that there would be an indirect effect of experiencing objectification on a given day on alcohol use later that day through increases in craving. Regression slopes were fixed to improve the likelihood of convergence. The Bayes estimator was used with non-informative priors, 2 MCMC chains, and the Gibbs algorithm. The potential scale reduction convergence criterion of nearing 1.00 was used. The model initially converged after 10,000 iterations, which were then doubled as an additional check. The posterior probability p-value (PPP) was used to examine model fit. Values around 0.50 represent excellent model fit (Asparouhov & Muthen, 2020). Finally, 95% credibility intervals (CI) based on posterior distributions were examined; if the CI did not include 0, the effect was deemed significant.

Results

Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations are in Table 2. Over half of participants (n = 48, 58.5%) experienced objectification (see Table 1 for participant-level endorsement by type). On average, objectification experiences were reported on 1.79 days (SD = 2.80). Sexualizing body gazes were reported most frequently (n = 104, 70.7% of 147 days with experienced objectification), followed by sexual remarks (n = 64, 43.5%), catcalling (n = 47, 32.0%), degrading sexual gestures (n = 17, 11.6%), and being touched against their will (n = 16, 10.9%). Participants reported alcohol use on approximately 23% of study days, consuming 2.96 (SD = 4.85) standard drinks on average. Regarding within-person associations, experiencing sexual objectification was associated with greater craving but not greater same-day likelihood of alcohol use. Greater craving was associated with greater likelihood of same-day alcohol use. The only significant association at the between-person level was that SMW reported higher average craving.

Table 2.

Descriptive Statistics

Variable	Person-Days	M (SD) or N (%)	Observed Range	ICC	1	2	3	4
1. Objectification Experiences	1522	147 (8.1%)	0, 1	.23	-	.12*	.12	n/a
2. Craving	1412	1.57 (0.86)	1–5	.37	−.20	-	.37*	n/a
3. Alcohol Use	1504	420 (23.3%)	0, 1	.19	−.11	.12	-	n/a
4. Sexual Minority Identity	n/a	36 (43.9%)	0, 1	n/a	−.01	.27*	−.01	-

Note. ICC = intraclass correlation. Sexual minority identity was dichotomized (1 = sexual minority, 0 = heterosexual). Higher ICCs indicate greater variance at the between-person level. Values above the diagonal are within-person correlations and values below the diagonal are between-person correlations.

^*95% CI did not include zero, indicating a significant effect.

Primary model results are in Table 3 (see Figure 1 for a visual depiction). The PPP was 0.48, indicating excellent model fit. At the within-person level, experiencing sexual objectification on a given day predicted greater same-day craving but not alcohol use. Greater than usual craving predicted alcohol use later that day. Supporting our hypothesis, there was a significant within-person indirect effect such that daily endorsement of sexual objectification experiences predicted subsequent alcohol use through heightened craving. At the between-person level, SMW reported greater average craving but did not experience sexual objectification or drink alcohol more frequently compared to heterosexual women. Average levels of objectification, craving, and alcohol were unrelated. There was not an indirect effect of sexual minority identity on alcohol use frequency via objectification and craving on average.

Table 3.

MSEM Results

Estimated Path	Estimate	Posterior SD	95% CI
			Lower 2.5%	Upper 2.5%
Within-person level
Objectification → Craving	0.09*	0.04	.010	.164
Objectification → Alcohol use	0.08	0.09	−.098	.261
Craving → Alcohol use	0.54*	0.07	.411	.678
Indirect effect of objectification on alcohol use via craving	0.05*	0.02	.006	.092
Between-person level
Sexual minority identity → Objectification	−0.01	0.24	−.468	.457
Sexual minority identity → Craving	0.31*	0.13	.051	.572
Sexual minority identity → Alcohol use	−0.06	0.20	−.443	.329
Objectification → Craving	−0.13	0.10	−.324	.058
Objectification → Alcohol use	−0.07	0.14	−.362	.204
Craving → Alcohol use	0.13	0.19	−.249	.515
Indirect effect of sexual minority identity on alcohol use via objectification and craving	0	.01	−.017	.018

Note. CI stands for credibility interval. Unstandardized estimates are presented. The PPP was 0.48, indicative of excellent model fit.

^{* =}95% CI did not include zero.

Figure 1.

Statistical Model

Note. SM = sexual minority identity. OBJ = sexual objectification experiences. CRV = craving. ALC = alcohol use.

Discussion

Findings support the notion that daily objectification experiences are a proximal risk factor of heightened craving and drinking among women sexual assault survivors who engage in probable alcohol misuse. Specifically, experiencing sexual objectification led to greater craving and, in turn, alcohol use later that day. In addition, SMW reported greater average craving but not more frequent objectification experiences or alcohol use. These results suggest reducing sexual objectification could help lower daily risk for alcohol use among sexual assault survivors.

Our findings that daily objectification predicted subsequent alcohol use through greater craving align with research positioning sexual objectification as an important stressor experienced by women (Roberts et al., 2018). Extreme forms of objectification, including non-consensual touching, were infrequent, suggesting that our results are primarily driven by more subtle forms of objectification such as ogling, sexual remarks, and catcalls. Even subtle forms of objectification are characterized by a dehumanizing focus on sexual characteristics that ignores women’s autonomy and personhood (Nussbaum, 1995) and can elicit negative emotions such as anxiety, anger, disgust, shame, powerlessness, and sadness (Koval et al., 2019; Moffitt & Szymanski, 2011; Watson et al., 2012). These unpleasant emotions may then prompt craving and alcohol use to lessen objectification-related distress. This pattern is consistent with self-medication models of drinking to alleviate stress and negative emotions, especially among individuals engaging in alcohol misuse, such as in this sample (Boness et al., 2021; Cho et al., 2019). These findings expand our understanding of stress-related drinking to include sexual objectification experiences as a novel daily precipitant. Notably, rates of alcohol use are rising among women (McCaul et al., 2019), an increase that has been linked to higher rates of trauma exposure including sexual assault (Guinle & Sinha, 2020) and may also include objectification. The ideal intervention is to prevent objectification from occurring at all; however, while objectification persists, strategies to help women cope without drinking may also be helpful (e.g., urge surfing for cravings, fostering positive self-image as resistance against objectification; Dulin & Gonzalez, 2017; Moradi et al., 2019).

By contrast, at the between-person level, the frequency of experiencing objectification was unrelated to average craving, which was in turn unrelated to alcohol use frequency across the study. These differential findings suggest that daily changes in objectification, rather than average levels over time, are most predictive of alcohol use. Because findings were only present at the daily level, proximal interventions that help prevent daily objectification and those that help women cope with and respond to objectification in the moment may be particularly warranted. Rates of experiencing objectification were relatively low throughout the study (8.1%, or 1.79 days out of 21), suggesting women could be more likely to drink in response to unexpected experiences of objectification. However, it is notable that our sample reported lower levels of objectification than have been found in other EMA studies (i.e., 2.75 and 3.69 times per week, Holland et al., 2017; Koval et al., 2019). These differences could reflect our use of a single early evening assessment of objectification, in contrast to prior work using multiple daily assessments until midnight (Holland et al., 2017; Koval et al., 2019). Thus, our study focused on whether objectification was experienced each day (rather than the number of times) and may have missed later evening occurrences.

As with some prior studies (Engeln-Maddox et al., 2011; Hill & Fischer, 2008; Kozee & Tylka, 2006), we did not find support for differences in objectification frequency across SMW and heterosexual women, suggesting that SMW may not be at higher risk for common forms of objectification. Future research could examine potential use of resistance strategies, such as avoiding environments with more potential perpetrators or seeking out affirming spaces (Moradi et al., 2019). Research suggests SMW face unique forms of objectification (e.g., fetishization, being treated as an experiment; Flores et al., 2018; Tebbe et al., 2018), yet these forms may not have been well-captured by our measure (Tebbe et al., 2021). We also could have missed differences within SMW (e.g., differences between bisexual, pansexual, lesbian, queer women) as we collapsed multiple sexual identities into a single category because of small cell sizes. Although rates of objectification did not differ, SMW reported greater average craving compared to heterosexual women. It is possible that elevated craving among SMW could reflect disproportionate exposure to discrimination and stressful life events (Krueger et al., 2020).

Despite heightened craving, SMW did not drink more frequently than heterosexual women. This parity could reflect our recruitment of women engaging in probable alcohol misuse, which meant all women were regularly drinking. A related possibility is that we did not find significant differences in alcohol use because disproportionate exposure to sexual assault is thought to contribute to elevated rates of alcohol misuse among SMW (Hughes et al., 2014), whereas all participants had experienced sexual assault in this study. Future research could examine other alcohol use outcomes, including quantity, intoxication, and alcohol-related consequences. Finally, it is possible SMW could be turning to coping strategies in response to more frequent craving. Prior work has identified several unique coping strategies among SMW (e.g., social connections with affirming community support, Drabble et al., 2018). Future work should examine whether these and other coping strategies may help buffer against craving and alcohol use, as well as strategies to ultimately prevent sexual minority stressors and objectification.

Limitations

When considering these findings, there are important limitations to note. Our sample consisted of predominantly White, cisgender, well-educated, young adult women. Future work should replicate findings among more diverse samples, especially as racial/ethnic minority and gender diverse individuals may be at heightened risk of being targeted by objectification (e.g., harmful stereotypes about Black women’s sexuality, invasive comments about gender affirmation, Anderson et al., 2018; Flores et al., 2018). Similarly, we collapsed diverse sexual minority identities into one category, which could have obscured important between-group differences such as elevated rates of alcohol use among bisexual women compared to lesbian women (Schuler & Collins, 2020) or the content of objectification experienced across sexual identities (Tebbe et al., 2018). All participants were recruited based on risk for alcohol misuse, which means this sample may be more likely to experience craving (although average craving was low) and results may not generalize to individuals who are less likely to crave and drink. Replication in larger samples would be helpful to test whether small between-person level associations emerge in larger samples to rule out the possibility of a Type II error.

Our sample consisted of women who had experienced sexual assault, who may be especially likely to perceive objectification negatively due to previous violations of body and sexual autonomy. Because inclusion for the larger study required some posttraumatic stress symptoms, our sample may have been more likely to be distressed by objectification as a reminder of prior sexual assault. However, some women may view objectification more positively (Liss et al., 2011; Visser et al., 2022). As noted, levels of sexual objectification were lower than in other EMA studies (Holland et al., 2017; Koval et al., 2019), which could stem from methodological differences. Lower rates could also reflect that participants were not experiencing objectification, missed more subtle occurrences (e.g., Koval et al., 2019), or have different interpretations of similar experienced events. Our study focused on daily sexual objectification experiences and craving before drinking to ensure temporal precedence for the hypothesized mediation model, but this focus could have led us to miss associations occurring earlier in the day. Further, due to the timing of the objectification measure, we could not examine concurrent or bidirectional associations, such as if women are then more likely to experience objectification in drinking settings such as bars and parties (Riemer et al., 2019). Finally, our measure of craving was a single item; while appropriate for EMA research (Song et al., 2023), one item cannot capture all important aspects of craving (e.g., duration, wanting versus liking, Kavanagh et al., 2013; Lane et al., 2016).

Future Directions

To complement this study’s focus on alcohol use, future studies could assess craving and use of other substances (e.g., cannabis, nicotine) following objectification. SMW–especially bisexual women–are more likely to report past-year cannabis use than heterosexual women (Schuler & Collins, 2020), which may stem from the use of cannabis to cope with unique bi+ stressors (Schofield et al., 2023; Schuler & Collins, 2020). Another important direction is improved measurement and further examination of sexual identity-specific forms of objectification that could be particularly distressing, such as hypersexualization of plurisexual women (Serpe et al., 2020) and harmful stereotypes that lesbian or asexual women can be “converted” through the right heterosexual partner (Chmielewski, 2017; Tebbe et al., 2018).

Intensive longitudinal methods (e.g., geolocation monitoring) and field studies could be used to identify high-risk environments for objectification perpetration and examine objectification in drinking settings, including how often objectification occurs and its potential impact on drinking (Riemer et al., 2019). In addition, laboratory designs could be used to pair objectification paradigms using confederates with alcohol self-administration to examine the effect of objectification on drinking with high internal validity. Although this study focused on the experiences of survivors, a critical future direction is to examine proximal associations between alcohol use and objectification perpetration among men to inform prevention efforts.

Findings also point to several clinical implications. In addition to helping women identify sources of support and coping outside of drinking, providers should validate the experience of distress elicited by objectification and emphasize that objectification is not the survivor’s fault. Crucially, intervention approaches should prioritize efforts to reduce objectification perpetration. Sexual assault prevention programs should incorporate and describe sexual objectification as a harmful behavior that normalizes treating women as objects without agency. Psychoeducation on the harmful effects of sexual objectification could include alcohol use as a deleterious outcome. Similarly, bystander training programs could include examples involving objectification perpetration to help bystanders recognize and intervene when they witness inappropriate sexual comments, gazes, and advances. Our findings suggest that reducing objectification would have downstream implications for reducing alcohol use among women who have experienced sexual assault, thereby leading to a myriad of individual and societal benefits.