“Hireability” prospects for known bystander reporters of sexual harassment: Moral character, agreeableness, and gender effects

Abstract

SummaryBystander intervention has been promoted across organizations to combat sexual harassment and its deleterious effects. However, the career consequences of bystander reporters (e.g., their hireability prospects inside and outside the organization)—those who report sexual harassment on behalf of coworkers—are not well understood. Based on the social identity and person perception literatures, which suggest that recruiters are motivated to hire candidates with attributes helpful to the organization (perceived moral character and agreeableness), we proposed that candidates' history of reporting sexual harassment on behalf of a victim leads to perceived high moral character but low agreeableness, which subsequently have countervailing effects on hireability of these known reporters. We found support across three experimental studies using realistic hiring decision‐making tasks and various employee samples. Based on the social identity literature, we further argued that perceptions and hireability of the known reporters depend on recruiter and candidate genders. In Study 2 and Study 3, we consistently found that the positive effect of reporting on perceptions of candidate moral character was weaker when the recruiter was male (vs. female) but we found mixed results for candidate gender effects. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.