Schematic Responses to Sexual Harassment Complainants: The Influence of Gender and Physical Attractiveness (original) (raw)
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The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in perceptions of two "severity dichotomies" present in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Guidelines on sexual harassment. Alale and female undergraduates (N = 198), from a predominately white midwestern university, were given one of four statements based on these guidelines, varying "form" (physical/verbal) and "consequence" (economic injury/hostile environment) of the behavior. Analysis of variance results showed females rated the incident as more definitely sexual harassment and as affecting perfonnance more than did males. Participants reading "economic injury" statements rated them as having more effect on the victim's job status than did those reading "hostile environment" statements. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed significant "consequence" and '~ex" effects on several factors: A significant three-way interaction showed that males rated statements less negatively than did females, especially when the statement described "physical" behavior with "hostile environment" consequences. Cluster analysis results are also presented.
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This article examines the effects of participant gender, researcher gender, and group gender composition (ratio of women to men) on individual judgments about an ambiguous, hypothetical, sexual harassment grievance. The participants (116 men and 113 women) served on five-person mock hearing boards. A main effect for participant gender was found ( p < .01), with significantly more women (58.4%) making affirmative sexual harassment judgments than men (35.3%). A significant three-way interaction ( p < .01) revealed that, when led by male researchers, men in groups where they were the numerical minority (3 women/2 men) made significantly lower ratings, indicating less belief that sexual harassment had occurred ( M = 2.83), than those men in groups where they were in the majority (2 women/3 men, M = 4.87; 4 men/1 woman, M = 4.88). Ingroup and outgroup behavior observed by Rogers, Hennigan, Bowman, and Miller (1984) is proposed as a possible explanation for these results.
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This research tests the possibility that the reasonable woman as compared to the reasonable person test of hostile work environment sexual harassment interacts with hostile and benevolent sexist beliefs and under some conditions triggers protectionist attitudes toward women who complain of sexual harassment, We administered to a sample of undergraduates the ambivalent sexism inventory along with the fact patterns in two harassment cases and asked them to make legally relevant decisions under either the reasonable woman or person standard. We found that those high in hostile sexism, and women, found more evidence of harassment. However, those high in benevolent sexism did not exhibit the hostile sexism effects. Although men were less sensitive to the reasonable woman standard than women, under some conditions the reasonable woman standard enabled both genders to find greater evidence of harassment. The results are discussed from the perspectives of law and psychology.
Psychology, Evolution and Gender, 2004
Quid pro quo (QPQ) sexual harassment, in which sexual compliance is tied to some consequent behavior of the harassing party, can involve 2 types of social interactions: social exchanges or threats. Two experiments evaluated how QPQ sexual harassment statements were perceived as different types of social interactions due to the manipulation of 3 variables. Experiment 1 had 120 Ss (60 males and 60 females, with an average age of 22.3 yrs) and Experiment 2 had 140 Ss (60 males and 80 females, with an average age of 21.6 yrs) all from a southeastern US University. Statements were predicted and found to be perceived differently across how they were posed (positive vs. negative value statements), across surrounding work contexts (thriving vs. failing), and across the sex of the harassed perceiver. These differing perceptions also affected subsequent behaviors in reasoning about the harassment situation. Implications of these results are discussed, along with limitations and future research directions.
The effects of sex and outcome expectancies on perceptions of sexual harassment
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Using an outcome expectancy framework, this research sought to understand sex differences in the underlying beliefs that influence harassment perception. One hundred and ninety-six participants (52% women) read a series of vignettes depicting common examples of digital male-on-female sexual harassment. They were asked to what extent they thought each scenario constituted sexual harassment, and how likely the perpetrator would experience positive and negative outcomes. Consistent with predictions, women were more likely to consider the behaviours as harassment than men were. Both sexes harassment perceptions had significant relationships with their outcome expectancies, but we also found evidence of a sex specific moderation; the link between men's negative outcome expectancies was moderated by their positive ones. The results suggest that perceptions of harassment may have sexually asymmetrical underpinnings. Measuring the interplay between positive and negative outcome expectancies in relation to sexual harassment perception is a novel approach, that may have implications for the development of anti-sexual harassment interventions. Implications for theory and future research directions are discussed.
Kaiser et al. 2022 Gender prototpes shape perceptions of harassment
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We provide a model describing how the narrow prototype of women as having conventionally feminine attributes and identities serves as a barrier to perceiving sexual harassment and appropriately responding to sexual-harassment claims when the victims of harassment do not resemble this prototype. We review research documenting that this narrow prototype of women overlaps with mental representations of sexual-harassment targets. The prototype of women harms women who diverge from this prototype: Their experiences with sexual harassment are less likely to be perceived as such, and they experience more negative interpersonal, organizational, and legal consequences when they experience harassment. Perceptions of sexual harassment are the catalyst by which sexual harassment is recognized and remedied. Thus, narrow gender prototypes may impede the promise and potential of civil rights laws and antiharassment policy.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1996
The role of physical attractiveness in perceptions of sexual harassment (SH) was investigated in two studies. In the first study, 164 undergraduates were given a complainant's description of either a verbal or physical incident of SH. Photographs varying physical attractiveness of the alleged harasser and victim were provided. Results showed gender differences in perceptions of incident characteristics and an attractiveness bias for both harasser and victim. There was evidence that characteristics of the setting affected ratings of physical attractiveness. A second study with 21 1 undergraduates, utilized a formal grievance paradigm with attractiveness varied through verbal labels in the complaint. Results showed gender differences in perceptions, as well as a tendency for subjects to identify more with same gender stimulus persons.