While watching a trailer to a video on advertisement's image of women the following statement is made:

It creates a climate where there is wide spread violence against women. I am not at all saying that an add like this directly causes violence, it's not that simple, but turning a human being into a thing is almost always the first step against justifying violence against that person. We see this with racism, we see this with homophobia, we see it with terrorism, it's always the same process. The person is dehumanized and violence then becomes inevitable.

Is there support in psychology that this is actually happening? That people being depicted as objects would cause others to commit violence against them?

An example from the video

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A violent person will justify their violence(unless they are a sociopath). These ads do not exist in the middle east and yet there is some horrible depravity to women accepted there. – Chad Dec 12 '11 at 17:34
@Chad - I don't think anyone is saying that this would be the only reason why someone would do violence onto another person. What this question is about is if we stopped doing these ads, would violence decrease? Or would the societies you mention were they to introduce these ads see even more violence. She is also saying that these ads caused the someone that would've been nonviolent to become violent by dehumanizing their target, what the person then uses as their subjective rationale is a separate issue. – Kit Sunde Dec 12 '11 at 18:11
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I'm bordering on down-voting and/or closing because there's not even a remote attempt to clearly define "turning women into objects". – DVK Dec 12 '11 at 20:05
The talk is full of unsubstantiated claims made as if they are widely accepted facts by the scientific community. – Boris Dec 12 '11 at 20:35
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@KitSunde, I've edited the question to make it clear that the issue is with causation and not correlation. – Sklivvz Dec 13 '11 at 10:52
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