McKenzie Lockett on Sexual Objectification and Experiential Isolation
McKenzie Lockett, MA, is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology (trauma track) at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. McKenzie’s research interests involve investigating the widespread effects of trauma exposure and traumatic stress on social and emotional functioning. McKenzie often applies existential frameworks, including terror management theory, to understand the role that existential awareness and anxiety can play in the onset and maintenance of traumatic stress.
By Kenneth Vail, Cleveland State University. Feb 18, 2021.
ISSEP: How did you first become aware of and interested in existentialism and existential psychology?
McKenzie Lockett: When I was doing my undergraduate at the University of Missouri, in 2012, I was having some anxiety about what I wanted to do in life. I was worried about not finding my passions and not being fulfilled in my work. On a whim, I took a social psychology class, which happened to be taught by Jamie Arndt. I was just blown away—he was so hyped about teaching, and about psychology, and music, and life. That really made an impression on me, so I started attending his office hours and ultimately joined his research lab where I got introduced to existential psychology, and terror management theory specifically. After that, I joined Tom Pyszczynski’s lab at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) where I’m continuing to study existential psychology in research and practice.
ISSEP: You’ve been doing some research about the intersection of sexual objectification and experiential isolation. Can you tell us more about those topics?
The never-ending parade of “Bond Girls” are a classic example of the sexual objectification of women in popular culture.
McKenzie Lockett: Objectification theory was developed by Tomi-Ann Roberts and Barbara Fredrickson, based on the lived experiences of women. Objectification theory argues that Western culture places an emphasis on women's physical bodies as sex objects. The emphasis can be so strong and pervasive that women are often viewed in terms of their physical appearance and sexual appeal rather than their competencies in, say, business, sports, science, and so on. We see that in action at film industry awards shows, or political campaigns, when reporters ask the males about what projects and policies they’re working on but ask the women about their make-up routines or what dresses they’re wearing. With self-objectification, women also evaluate themselves based primarily on their physical appearance and sexual appeal to others.
Experiential isolation is when you feel that you’re alone in your subjective reality. It’s different than being physically or socially isolated. If you’re the only artistic kid in your high school class, you might be surrounded by other people in close proximity, yet still feel alone in your subjective experience of the world. Experiential connection, on the other hand, is when you feel that other people are sharing your experience of reality. We experience that sense of shared reality when other people can relate to, and affirm, your subjective experience—whether it’s sharing obscure musical tastes or even the mundane perception that the sky is “blue.”
ISSEP: How does your research bring those two topics together?
McKenzie Lockett: It seemed obvious that women would experience high levels of subjective isolation if people in society, including women themselves, are focused on women’s external objective appearance instead of their subjective experiences. That’s super important, to me, because self-objectification is associated with a variety of negative outcomes for mental health and interpersonal relationships.
So, my colleagues and I conducted some basic exploratory studies, and we found that people who self-objectify more also report higher levels of subjective isolation. We also found that effect was moderated by gender. There was no association between self-objectification and existential isolation for men—it only occurred for women.
ISSEP: Does your research point to any further explanations about why that link is happening?
McKenzie Lockett: Yes, some of my more recent research gives us some hints there. Like I mentioned earlier, objectification involves focusing on our external appearances to other people, instead of our own subjective experience. That essentially means we become an instrument for other people to use. In line with that idea, our research found that objectification involves a loss of autonomy and lack of consensual validation of one’s own subjective reality, so that helps explain why it can lead to existential isolation.
“objectification involves a loss of autonomy and lack of consensual validation of one’s own subjective reality”
ISSEP: How did you develop an interest in the role of self-objectification in the experience of existential connection and sense of shared reality?
McKenzie Lockett: From a few different places. First, I’m a woman and I’ve felt these experiences myself. So, I know it can feel really isolating and invalidating. When people just focus on your physical appearance or your attractiveness, and when the emphasis is so strong that you start to self-objectify, you can really get the sense that “who you are as a person” doesn’t matter all that much. You start to get the sense that nobody’s really very interested in your subjective experience of the world. So, I think I've always been interested in objectification and isolation.
Additionally, I’m also interested in trauma, and objectification clears the way for society to inflict and allow traumas on women. When women are viewed as sexual objects, and their subjective experiences are largely ignored, we see all sorts of harmful effects. People consider it understandable when women receive unwanted sexual advances, and they feel sympathy for those who commit sexual assault against women. People feel less empathy for women, because nobody’s sharing in or imagining what her subjective experience might have been, which makes it difficult for people to be responsive and sensitive and preventative of the various sexualized traumas women experience. So, the connection between objectification and experiential isolation can create the dangerous conditions that traumatize women, and desensitize us to women’s experience of those same traumas when they do occur.
ISSEP: You’ve been studying these issues using psychological science. Do you see your research topic being dealt with in interesting ways in the humanities or the arts?
Clockwise from top left: The Second Sex (Beauvoir, 1949); Bell Hooks; How to Build a Girl, the book (2015) and the film (2019)
McKenzie Lockett: Yes! Objectification and subjective isolation are everywhere!
In philosophy, Simone de Beauvoir’s book The Second Sex, she talks about how women are often viewed as a sex object, which immediately leads to an ignorance of the subjectivity of the woman as her own being. And other feminist works, by thinkers like Bell Hooks, go even further—to not only examine the objectification of women, but also the objectification of Black people in America and how their subjective experience often gets ignored or outright rejected. In Bell Hooks’ book Black Looks, she explores the representation and objectification of black bodies in film, TV, and other media.
In a more artistic domain, one novel I recommend is How to Build a Girl, by Caitlin Moran. It came out in 2015 and made it to NPR’s top 100 books of the year, and then it got made into a film in 2019. Anyway, it’s a fictional story of a teenage girl, and it’s a comedy, but what you see is how often she has to cater to the expectations and opinions of men and how often she invalidates herself because of their opinions. It’s an excellent artistic depiction of the relationship between self-objectification and subjective isolation.
ISSEP: In what ways does your work on objectification and isolation help us make sense of important human experiences, better understand important events, or inform our cultural or technological trends?
McKenzie Lockett: What I’ve found is that people really connect with this research. So, awareness and education could help people avoid objectification, and gain a better sense of how this potentially affects them, isolates people, or causes tangible harm to women.
This work could also help us better understand mental health problems among women including depression, low self-esteem, disordered eating. So, it’s possible this is one of the ways self-objectification translates into such a wide range of negative mental health outcomes, and could be a mechanism for clinicians to address on an individual basis. On a cultural and social level, there are important implications there as well, and an improved understanding of the effects of objectification could lead to changes in the way we view and relate to women.
ISSEP: What do you see as the most important next steps toward better understanding the ways that cultural approaches to women might be related to the sense of isolation and shared reality?
Serena Williams has endured life-long pressure to amplify her sex appeal, and ridicule for her strong and muscular physique, despite being one of the greatest tennis players of all time. In 2018, she responded by wearing a tutu skirt singlet on court.
McKenzie Lockett: There are a lot of really exciting paths forward. Our studies have been some of the first to connect the two topics, so really any additional work would help advance the field here.
Our work, so far, has been correlational. So, we’re looking forward to seeing more experimental and longitudinal studies to better clarify the causal and developmental pathways. I think we really need to document the directional path. Does objectification lead women to feel existential isolation? Does existential isolation lead women to self-objectify? Are both true; is there a bi-directional relationship? Are both being caused by a third variable? We don’t know the answers to those questions yet.
Also, I want to see the field explore the implications for mental health. Does existential isolation play a role in the link between objectification and depression, anxiety, and restrained eating, and if so how can we use that information to address the problem?
ISSEP: You’ve attended, and presented research at, our Existential Psychology Pre-conferences. What’s been your experience been with those events?
McKenzie Lockett: It's been great! I think everyone in existential psychology is just so wonderful, and so excited for each other, and there's such a great sense of community. I went to the first one in 2019, and then again this year [2021] as well. And even though this last one was online, because of the pandemic, it still had this great sense of community.
One of the things I really like about the existential preconference is that existential psychology touches such a broad range of topics, so the preconference is a good way to get outside my own little corner of psychology and see other areas that I might not typically think about. For example, I spend a lot of time thinking about objectification, and isolation, and trauma, but not much about motivated enforcement of the political, social, and economic status quo. So, it was great to be at this year’s existential preconference because we got to hear John Jost speak about system justification theory, which helped to bridge all of those topics and was a really helpful and enlightening experience.
“My advice is to read widely and deeply”
What is one piece of advice you would give to future students who have an interest in following in your footsteps, so they too can make innovative contributions to the science of existential psychology?
McKenzie Lockett: My advice is to read widely and deeply. This field involves a large literature, with a complex blend of theory and empirical research. For example, within terror management theory, there have been empirical papers and theoretical updates sprinkled across the past 35 years. That literature, alone, is a treasure trove of methodological and theoretical innovations. The existential psychology literature is full of that sort of thing, so I think anyone who's interested in pursuing existential psychology would benefit from a comprehensive and deep exploration of the literature. That’s an essential first step, and a major foundation for a career in the field.
ISSEP: Can you tell us a little about yourself outside the research context?
McKenzie Lockett: Well, I’m really into music. Before the pandemic, I used to really love going to concerts. I was a regular at a venue called The Blue Note in Colombia, MO (USA). That was my self-care. I'm also really into art, and used to love going to art museums.
Also, a fun fact about me is that I'm a big nerd for A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin, which is the book series that led to the Game of Thrones TV show. So, I like to go on the internet and read all the various theories about the books, and then text my other nerd friends and talk about what might happen in the next book. There's so much there to engage with, and reflect on, and consider from so many different perspectives.
ISSEP: A lot of us like to listen to music in the lab; what are you listening to lately?
McKenzie Lockett: I have two contributions here; one’s an album and one’s a song.
The album is R Plus Seven (2007), by Oneohtrix Point Never. He also just came out with a new studio album in 2020, too. I'm actually new to him, but his music is pretty rich. It's experimental electronic music and kind of light on lyrics, which is nice when you're reading or working in the lab. It’s weird, and out of the box, but it’s worth sharing.
My song, though, is So Emotional, by Whitney Houston, which gets me super pumped up. I didn't really start listening to her until the last year, and I’m so glad I did. I mean, it’s Whitney Houston. I really love her, she's just so amazing—what an absolute queen.