Antecedents of Gender Harassment: An Analysis of Person and Situation Factors

Abstract

Two laboratory studies examined the impact of person and situation factors in the prediction of gender harassment. Male undergraduates from a mid-sized Midwestern university in the U.S. were recruited based on an assessment of sexist attitudes. It was predicted that, across two studies, characteristics of one's personality (sexist attitudes) and situational characteristics (sexual priming and masculine identity threat) would produce unique and interactive effects in the prediction of gender harassment, defined behaviorally as the number of sexist questions asked of women during a mock job interview, and cognitively as negative evaluations of the female interviewee. Across both studies, results support the predictions that both person and situation factors are important to understanding gender harassment.

Cat-Calls and Culpability: Investigating the Frequency and Functions of Stranger Harassment

“…There are other possible motivations that may also be important for stranger harassment, such as that men may engage in these behaviors to establish dominance or power over the target(s); this could serve an individual or groupbased desire for expressing dominance over women (Gardner 1995;Pryor and Whalen 1997; see also Bargh et al 1995;Murphy et al 1999;Pryor and Stoller 1994). Stranger harassment could also be motivated by misogyny or hostile sexism, serving as a form of verbal aggression towards the target(s) (Dall'Ara and Maass 1999;Hitlan et al 2009;Maass et al 2003; see Glick and Fiske 1996, for a discussion of hostile sexism). Research demonstrates hostile sexism predicts tolerance towards sexual harassment (Russell and Trigg 2004).…”

Bystander Sexism in the Intergroup Context: The Impact of Cat-calls on Women’s Reactions Towards Men

“…Previous work has focused on the impact of group identities from the perspective of the sexist perpetrator and has demonstrated that (male) identity concerns often lead men to enact sexist behavior (Hitlan et al 2009;Maass et al 2003;Pryor and Whalen 1997). From the perspective of the target, however, researchers have tended to emphasize the role of chronic group identification in affecting women's individual reactions to sexism (Cameron 2001;McCoy and Major 2003).…”

Sexual Harassment: Undermining the Wellbeing of Working Women

“…Moreover, experimental studies have found that men are more likely to sexually harass when they feel threatened by women; this is especially true when women display feminist (rather than traditional) attitudes (Dall'Ara and Maass 1999 ; Hitlan et al 2009 ;Maass et al 2003 ;Siebler et al 2008 ). A recent study of working women suggests that women who engage in feminist activism are more likely to be targeted with both sexual advance harassment and gender harassment at work (Holland and Cortina 2013 ).…”