Making the Sexual Harassment of Others Self-Relevant: The Roles of Identity Salience and Value Affirmation

Abstract

In three experiments, female participants were primed to think of themselves as female university students or unique individuals. We predicted that group-primed participants would find reading about the sexual harassment of a female student threatening to their self-concepts. However, if these participants could affirm an important value, the threat to their personal self-esteem might be resolved. Group-primed participants who wrote about an important individual value reported higher personal self-esteem in comparison with group-primed participants who did not. However, when group-primed participants wrote about a value important to their group, they did not report higher personal self-esteem in comparison to group-primed participants who lacked this opportunity. The results suggest that group-primed participants who affirmed an important individual value reported higher personal self-esteem because it allowed them to re-categorize themselves as unique individuals who were different from the female victim.