我们都是“打工人”:工作中的客体化

We are all “Corporate Slaves”: Working Objectification

在劳动者权利意识觉醒、工作的心理环境越来越受到重视等现实背景下,本文聚焦于工作中的客体化这一具有深远社会意义和重要研究价值的现象,从四个方面较为系统地对现有研究成果进行了评述。首先,在工作情境中,人们为何会客体化他人?其次,在工作情境中,客体化经历将引发工作者哪些心理与行为后果?第三,在工作情境中,工作者会否主动或被动地将自我客体化?最后,在工作情境中,如何减弱客体化的负面后果?未来研究应更广泛地探讨情境和宏观环境以及文化因素对工作客体化的影响;探讨工作客体化对道德感知和后续社会行为的影响;关注工作自我客体化的心理功能以及建立工作客体化的解释框架或理论。

“996”, “Workplace bullying”, “Corporate slaves”... These buzzwords have triggered heated discussion in recent years, reflecting the social ecology of the contemporary workplace and the psychological dilemma of workers. Nowadays, as busyness and efficiency increasingly become the main melody in the workplace, workers are becoming tools to achieve such goals, and their wellbeing to some extents is ignored intentionally or unintentionally. This phenomenon has long existed from the Slavery Society and was conceptualized as work objectification(i.e., treating others as mere objects at work). In the process of work objectification, people often unconsciously judge others based on their usefulness. To be specific, work objectification includes two dimensions: treating workers as tools and denial of humanness. The core of the work objectification lies in the emphasis on workers’ instrumentality, which regards the workers as tools and thus ignores their humanity.Objectification in work has far-reaching social significance and important research value. This paper systematically reviews the existing research from four aspects. First of all, why do people objectify others in the workplace? First, the workplace can galvanize an “objective mindset”.The calculative and strategic climate in the workplace, the performance incentive system in the organization, and the boredom caused by repetitive and fragmented work are likely to trigger the objective mindset. Second, unequal power relationships in work situations lead to the prominence of instrumental goals, competitive attitudes, self-interested goals, and exchange rules, which lead people to evaluate others with instrumental values.Third, the prevalent value of money talks at workplace promotes the tendencies to view others in a market-priced way of thinking and thus, to treat others instrumentally and deny the mental abilities of the objectified workers.Secondly, what are the psychological and behavioral consequences of work objectification? For people who are objectified, objectification will damage their work behavior and organizational attitude. For example, being objectified will make workers feel more exploited, less engaged in organizational prosocial behaviors, and report lower job satisfaction and higher turnover intention. Being objectified will also harm the physical and mental health of workers. For example, it will lead to lower subjective well-being and more aggressive behavior. Besides, people who objectify others are not unaffected. Objectifying others at work may bring positive benefits to individuals, such as making decisions more efficiently and accurately and selecting the best collaborators to achieve specific goals. At the same time, objectifying others increases an individual’s tendency to hurt or harm others, such as discrimination, sexual harassment, and bullying.Thirdly, do workers actively or passively objectify themselves in work situations? Frequent experiences of being objectified will make individuals to be less likely to attribute human mentality to themselves and thus, perceive themselves as tools. That is, they have a higher level of self-objectification. Self-objectification in the workplace can also negatively affect individuals. On the one hand, since self-objectification individuals have lower autonomy and initiative at work, they will report lower belief in free will and show a higher tendency to conform. On the other hand, self-objectification may also damage workers’ physical and mental health, leading to job burnout and negative emotional experiences.Finally, how to reduce the phenomenon of objectification in the work situation? Improving the sense of self-control, authenticity, and work meaning can alleviate the negative consequences caused by the experience of being objectified. Arousing individuals’ gratitude can reduce the objectification of others. In addition, from the organizational level, creating a more warm and cordial working environment or improving the organizational identification may reduce the phenomenon of objectification in work.Future research should extensively explore the precedents(e.g., macro environment and culture) and outcomes(e.g., moral perception and prosocial behavior) of work objectification. Theoretically, future work should pay attention to the psychological function of work self-objectification and try to establish a theoretical framework on work objectification.