Psychological predictors of sexual harassment: Authoritarianism, hostile sexism, and rape myths.

Abstract

Sexual harassment has been found to be common in the workplace. Forty-two percent to 88% of working women report having been sexually harassed. Recent research on sexual harassment has taken a cognitive approach, arguing that male sexual harassment of women results from 2 types of sexism in combination with stereotypes: hostile sexism and benevolent sexism. This study considers a model that a deeper personality characteristic, authoritarianism, contributes to the likelihood of sexual harassment, in combination with variables identified as influencing sexual aggression. Results consistent with a model of emotional displacement indicated that authoritarianism predicts men's self-reported likelihood of engaging in sexual harassment, mediated by belief in rape myths and S. Fiske and P. Glick's (1995) Hostile Sexism. Benevolent sexism did not predict the likelihood of sexual harassment.

“It was only harmless banter!” The development and preliminary validation of the moral disengagement in sexual harassment scale

“…Carroll (2009) found that moral disengagement (as measured by the MDS) in male college fraternity members was negatively correlated with moral judgment and positively associated with rape supportive attitudes, including greater attribution of blame to a female victim of ambiguous acquaintance rape. Given consensus among many researchers that sexually harassing behavior lies along a continuum of sexual aggression (e.g., Begany & Milburn, 2002;Kelly, 1988;Lonsway et al, 2008;Pina et al, 2009;Quina, 1990), it is feasible to expect this correlational pattern to replicate when moral disengagement (measured by the MDiSH) is tested in the context of an ambiguous case of hostile work environment harassment. Thus, in Study 3, we predicted that the MDiSH would display a negative correlation with moral judgment (operationalized as the perceived moral Moral Disengagement in Sexual Harassment 14 acceptability of hostile work environment harassment) and a positive correlation with attribution of blame to the female complainant.…”

Sexismo y agresiones físicas, sexuales y verbales-emocionales, en relaciones de noviazgo de estudiantes universitarios

“…Por ejemplo Begany y Milburn (2002) señalan la relación existente entre el sexismo hostil y actitudes autoritarias como predictoras de acoso sexual. Chapleau, Oswald y Sexismo y agresiones físicas, sexuales y verbales-emocionales en relaciones de noviazgo de estudiantes universitarios Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology, 9(2), 541-564.…”

Investigating the Utility of the Film War Zone as a Component of a Street Harassment Prevention Program

“…Ambivalent sexism is related to perpetration of sexual victimization; however, most of this relationship seems to be carried by hostile sexism (Abbey, McAuslan, Zawacki, Clinton, & Buck, 2001;Begany & Milburn, 2002;Caron & Carter, 1997;Forbes, Adams-Curtis, & White, 2004;Murnen, Wright, & Kaluzny, 2002). For example; both benevolent and hostile sexism were related to sexual harassment in a study of undergraduate men's and women's attitudes toward sexual harassment (Russell & Trigg, 2004); however, the correlation between hostile sexism and tolerance for sexual harassment was much higher than for benevolent sexism and tolerance.…”