Sexual Harassment Scenarios Research Articles

The Continuation of Perpetrator Behaviors that Influence Perceptions of Sexual Harassment

This study was designed to investigate sexual harassment perceptions based on continuation of unwanted sexual attention following victim resistance. Participants were 504 undergraduates who responded to statements regarding a sexual harassment scenario, in which the perpetrator continued or discontinued attention, which varied in severity according to nonphysical, physical, or restraint contact. Results showed that continued attention and any type of physical contact strengthened harassment perceptions, although men’s perceptions were weaker unless restraint was present. No sex differences were observed in the restraint condition. Women had stronger perceptions than men did in the physical condition, but showed a non-significant trend toward stronger perceptions in the nonphysical condition. Findings suggest that continuation following resistance may clarify for observers that harassment is occurring. Conceptualizations of harassment severity are suggested.

Do Attending Physicians, Nurses, Residents, and Medical Students Agree on What Constitutes Medical Student Abuse?

Whether attending physicians, residents, nurses, and medical students agree on what constitutes medical student abuse, its severity, or influencing factors is unknown. We surveyed 237 internal medicine attending physicians, residents, medical students, and nurses at 13 medical schools after viewing five vignettes depicting potentially abusive behaviors. The majority of each group felt the belittlement, ethnic insensitivity, and sexual harassment scenarios represented abuse but that excluding a student from participating in a procedure did not. Only a majority of attending physicians considered the negative feedback scenario as abuse. Medical students rated abuse severity significantly lower than other groups in the belittlement scenario (p<.05). Respondents who felt abused as students were more likely to rate behaviors as abusive (p<.05). The groups generally agree on what constitutes abuse, but attending physicians and those abused as students may perceive more behaviors as abusive.

Effects of Type of Coping Response, Setting, and Social Context on Reactions to Sexual Harassment

Male and female undergraduates from a multicultural university (MU) and an historically Black University (HBU) read a scenario in which a student was sexually harassed either by a professor or a workplace supervisor. The student victim's coping response was also varied. Participants rated the victim's behavior as most effective and appropriate when she confronted the harasser directly or reported the harasser's behavior. HBU students judged the harasser as not guilty significantly more often than MU students, but believed that the harasser was less trustworthy than multicultural students did. Women responded significantly more negatively to the blatant sexual harassment scenario than men did. Implications for prevention and interventions are discussed.

The Impact of Job Level and Prior Training on Sexual Harassment Labeling and Remedy Choice1

Supervisors, managers, and executives (N= 118) comprised the sample for this field study of persons’ labeling of sexual harassment and endorsement of various remedies for sexual harassment. The research method involved questionnaires issued in conjunction with 2 videotaped sexual harassment scenarios of differing severity. Results support predictions of participants’ ability to distinguish harassment severity, the effect of job level, and prior training's effect. Implications for qualifying the concept of work environment sexualization (Gutek, 1985) with consideration of job levels are discussed. Implications for sexual harassment awareness training and management practice are also discussed.

Perceptions of Sexual Harassment Victims as a Function of Labeling and Reporting

Sexual harassment scenarios were used to examinethe effects of labeling and reporting on perceptions ofsexual harassment victims. Whether the woman in thescenario labeled the act as sexual harassment and whether she reported the incident to alegitimate authority were manipulated in a 2 × 2× 2 between subjects design. Participants were 113(63 male, 50 female) Arizona State Universityundergraduate psychology students. The majority of theparticipants were Caucasian (69%) with the remainingethnic breakdown as follows: Asian (12%), Hispanic (8%),African American (6%), Native American (2%), and Other (3%). It was hypothesized that the act oflabeling and reporting would be perceived as incongruouswith social- and gender-role norms and subsequentlywould lead to less favorable evaluations of the target. In general, the data were consistent with theexpectancy violation hypothesis, which predicts that theviolation of stereotype-based expectations will causenegative evaluations of a target (Jussim, Coleman, & Lerch, 1987). Women who used the sexualharassment label were attributed greater blame for theincident and were viewed as less trustworthy and lessfeminine. Although women who reported sexual harassment were perceived as higher in qualities ofassertiveness, they too were perceived as lesstrustworthy and less feminine. Additional resultssuggest that both men and women thought that members ofthe opposite gender would derogate the woman if she labeledand/or reported the incident. Implications of expectancyviolation processes for the reporting of sexualharassment are discussed.

The Perception of Sexual Harassment in Higher Education: Impact of Gender and Attractiveness

This experimental study used an ambiguous sexualharassment scenario, and manipulated gender and level ofphysical attractiveness within a perpetrator/victimdyad. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of sexual harassment of maleand female students as well as perceptions ofperpetrator and victim character traits. Twohundred-ninety six male and 295 female undergraduate andgraduate students at a large urban university were askedto read the scenario and describe behavior and charactertraits for perpetrator and victim using a seven-pointsemantic differential scale. Eighty-four percent (n = 495) of the sample were White, 5.3% (n =31) were African American, 5.9% (n = 39) were ofHispanic origin, and 4.7% (n = 28) marked other forrace/ethnicity. Results indicate that female studentsperceived the scenario as more sexually harassing thanmale students. However, both men and women judged femaleperpetrators less harshly than male perpetrators. Bothmen and women were influenced by perpetrator attractiveness: they perceived an attractiveopposite gender perpetrator as less harassing than asame gender attractive perpetrator.

Ranking Harassment: A Multidimensional Scaling of Sexual Harassment Scenarios

Abstract Despite a recent storm of research on sexual harassment, there is not a useful way to categorize sexual harassment behaviors. Researchers have often relied on the dimension of severity, arranging behaviors in terms of how severe or offensive each behavior is. However, because sexual harassment, by definition, necessarily involves an act that is offensive and severe, we challenge the dimension of severity as the most meaningful categorization. In this exploratory research, we employed multidimensional scaling to analyze the results of a sorting task. Undergraduate women in the United States were asked to sort 18 sexual harassment scenarios. Results suggest a two-dimensional solution, with publicness and traditionality as the proposed dimensions.

The effects of personal and situational factors on university administrators' responses to sexual harassment

The present study was designed to assess how managerial personnel respond to various sexual harassment scenarios. Much of the sexual harassment research has utilized samples other than managerial personnel. Therefore, this study attempts to determine whether the findings in the literature generalize to a managerial sample. University administrators' responses to sexual harassment scenarios were assessed, with type of harassment (economic injury, hostile environment, or no harassment) and offender's status (supervisor or co-worker) being varied. Analyses revealed a lack of predicted sex differences in perceptions and definitions of sexual harassment and unanticipated sex differences in complaint handling and belief in sexual harassment myths. There were no offender status effects. The significant type of harassment effects was present for complaint handling, familiarity, and situation perceptions. In all cases, the respondents who received the “no harassment” scenario differed in their responses from the participants who had received one of the two harassment scenarios.

Attributions of responsibility for an incident of sexual harassment in a university setting

The present study replicated and extended research on the effects of observer characteristics (i.e., gender and traditional vs. less traditional attitudes) on attributions of responsibility in a case of sexual harassment. Participants (120 males, 120 females) were randomly assigned to one of six conditions that varied the gender of the victim and the victim's reaction. A sexual harassment scenario involving a university student and professor of the opposite gender was presented as an audiotape of the victim's account. Participants with less traditional attitudes attributed less responsibility to the victim than did participants with traditional attitudes. Females attributed more responsibility to the perpetrator and the victim of the same gender than did males. Victim reaction interacted with participant gender; males responded in a manner that was consistent with the reaction manipulation, whereas females attributed less responsibility to the self-blaming victim than to either the perpetrator-blaming or control victims. The results are discussed in the light of attribution theory and previous research.

Comment on Crocker's "An Analysis of University Definitions of Sexual Harassment"

In her article "An Analysis of University Definitions of Sexual Harassment" (Signs 8, no. 4 [Summer 1983]: 696-707), Phyllis L. Crocker evaluates the definitions of sexual harassment used by academic, professional, and governmental bodies. Her analysis is astute, enlightening, and important. However, she makes no mention of sexual harassment of women professors by their men students.' There is a general lack of awareness of this type of harassment not only in Crocker's work and the official definitions but also in other research on sexual harassment within