Girls as objects, boys as humans: Young children tend to be objectified along gender lines.

= 418, ages 4-10 years) display gendered patterns of objectification toward other children. We found evidence that adults objectify children based on gender: in both their categorizations and attributions, adults revealed overlap between their concepts of girls and objects and their concepts of boys and humans (although the degree to which each specific pattern manifested varied across studies). Children showed more limited evidence of this phenomenon: boys, but not girls, displayed the predicted pattern of conceptual overlap, and only in their categorizations. Together, these findings reveal that gender-differentiated patterns of objectification may take root in perceptions of young children-suggesting that the gendered consequences of this phenomenon may be larger in scope and earlier-emerging than previously assumed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).