People who create content on the digital platform OnlyFans are heavily sexually objectified by observers, yet they are simultaneously viewed as capable individuals with free will. These findings challenge the traditional psychological assumption that sexually objectifying someone automatically strips them of their perceived autonomy and humanity. The research was recently published in The Journal of Social Psychology.
Sexual objectification occurs when a person is reduced to their body parts or physical appearance, primarily to satisfy the desires of others. Psychologists have observed that this reduction typically leads to dehumanization. When observers focus entirely on a target’s physical form, they tend to ignore the target’s internal states and mental capacities.
A primary casualty of this psychological process is agency, which is the capacity to think, plan, and act with intention. Prior research has consistently shown that sexually objectified women are viewed as passive and lacking the ability to make independent choices. This loss of perceived agency is a core component of dehumanization, effectively reducing a person to a mere tool for someone else’s gratification.
The rise of new digital media platforms has altered how people present themselves online. OnlyFans allows creators to share personalized explicit content directly with paying subscribers. Unlike traditional media, the creators retain control over their scheduling, content style, and pricing.
Researchers Chiara Pecini and Alessandra Sacino from the University of Genoa led a team to investigate whether the traditional rules of objectification apply in this modern digital environment. They wanted to know if observers can objectify a person while still recognizing that the person is actively orchestrating their own sexualization. The research team designed four distinct experiments to capture these social perceptions.
In the first experiment, 220 male participants reviewed fictitious survey responses supposedly written by a young woman. Half the men read a profile of a woman who actively used and enjoyed creating content on OnlyFans. The other half read about a woman who did not use the platform.
The researchers measured how much the men intended to sexually objectify the woman, alongside how much agency they attributed to her. The men reported higher intentions to sexually objectify the content creator compared to the woman not on the platform. However, the men did not rate the creator as having any less capacity to make choices or exercise self-control.
To see if this pattern held up against another highly sexualized role, the team conducted a second experiment with 253 men. This time, participants compared an OnlyFans creator to a motorsport umbrella girl, a traditional occupation where women stand alongside racecar drivers to shield them from the sun. The participants also viewed artificial intelligence-generated photos of the women in either highly sexualized or casual clothing.
The men reported higher intentions to sexually objectify the digital content creator than the umbrella girl. Despite this higher level of objectification, they attributed greater free will to the creator than to the umbrella girl. Whether the woman was pictured in sexualized or casual clothing produced results that were not statistically significant, suggesting the occupational role drove the perception.
The researchers then explored whether the creator’s financial success influenced how observers perceived their autonomy. In a third experiment involving 188 men and women, participants evaluated a creator who earned either a high monthly income of 4,000 euros or a low income of 120 euros. The photos again varied between casual and sexualized attire.
In this particular test, neither the income level nor the style of clothing altered the participants’ judgments. The differences in attributed free will across the groups were not statistically significant. The research team suspected that financial success alone might not communicate autonomy without understanding the creator’s personal motives.
A final experiment recruited 323 men and women to evaluate a creator’s profile based on a combination of income and their motivation for joining the platform. Some profiles stated the creator was intrinsically motivated, meaning she enjoyed showing off her body and feeling appreciated. Other profiles indicated an extrinsic motivation, stating she joined purely out of financial necessity.
The researchers evaluated self-determination, which is a specific facet of agency centered on a person’s ability to direct their own life free from external pressures. The participants rated the intrinsically motivated creator as having a higher level of self-determination than the extrinsically motivated one. A high income also slightly elevated the creator’s perceived self-determination.
Female participants were more sensitive to the motivation details than male participants. Women adjusted their ratings more sharply based on whether the creator enjoyed the work. Men tended to view the creators similarly regardless of their underlying motivations.
The results indicate a modern form of objectification where the target retains their perceived humanity and ability to choose. This attribution of agency can be a positive shift, but the researchers note it may rely on an illusion of total control. Once digital content is distributed, creators often lose the ability to dictate where their images end up, exposing them to nonconsensual sharing and harassment.
Observers who assume creators have complete autonomy might also engage in victim-blaming if that creator experiences online abuse. When society views these creators as entirely responsible for their sexualization, people might be less sympathetic when the creators face privacy violations. Fictional profiles in a controlled experiment also lack the interpersonal dynamics of a real digital exchange.
The participants in these experiments were familiar with the platform but were not active paying subscribers. Future studies will need to test whether people who regularly purchase explicit digital content perceive the creators differently. The researchers also hope to see if these attitudes apply to other forms of digital sex work.
The study, “Objects and Agents? Social Perception of OnlyFans Content Creators,” was authored by Chiara Pecini, Alessandra Sacino, Bianca Tallone, Roberta Rosa Valtorta, Gian Antonio Di Bernardo, and Luca Andrighetto.
