Research Advances in Sexual Harassment: Introduction and Overview

Abstract

Social science research on sexual harassment first emerged in the early 1980s. Basic and Applied Social Psychology (BASP) was at the forefront in publishing research on this topic with an article by Gutek, Nakamura, Gahart, Handschumacher, and Russell (1980). One of the most cited publications in the social psychological literature from this era was an issue of the Journal of Social issues edited by Brewer and Berk in 1982. This issue summarized some of the then current theory on sexual harassment and presented several new empirical findings on issues such as how people interpret sexual harassment. Although there has been a steady stream of articles on this topic since 1982, it was not until the Clarence Thomas hearings, in the fall of 1991, that sexual harassment began to draw attention beyond that of a handful of gender issue researchers and feminist political activists. The surge of public attention has attracted more and more researchers to the area, and several collections of social science articles ...