Status is a manifold construct. It can refer to a given individual’s position in a specific hi- erarchy, e.g., middle manager versus CEO in a firm. It can also refer to the position of a whole social group in a given society, e.g., Caucasian Americans having higher status, overall, than African Americans. Furthermore, status can be defined by a number of characteristics: It can be inferred from the social role someone occupies (e.g., supervisor versus subordinate, or mother versus child), by one’s occupation (e.g., medical doctor versus welder), or by someone’s monthly earnings. Moreover, status can be inferred from or assigned to physical features (e.g., being tall versus being small) or personality traits (e.g., dominance versus anxiousness). Inherent to status, and sometimes used synonymously with the concept, is power. Power is in itself a manifold construct and can refer to the influence one wields by means of social prestige, to earn- ing power, or to power over others. Unfortunately, many researchers on status effects on percep- toins of harassment do not clearly state what kind of status they refer to.
High socioeconomic status can be advantageous for defendants in mock juries, as a meta- analysis has established (Mazzella & Feingold, 1994). Outside courtrooms also, poor individuals are generally rated less favorably than those who are well off (Lott, 2002). With regard to har- assment research, status and power are often confounded: Any manager has higher organiza- tional status than any secretary and probably earns more, but only the immediate supervisor of a secretary has power over her or him. When using status as a feature in harassment scenarios, it is therefore important to disentangle status and power. Arguably, being harassed by any manager might be not as upsetting for a secretary as being harassed by one’s own supervisor, who can influence one’s future career. However, in much of the literature, it is not clarified whether status or power, or which aspect of the two, is addressed.
The two broad perspectives on harassment, namely, the evolutionary perspective and the socio-structural perspective, emphasize different aspects of status and power. The socio- structural approach to harassment focuses on the power aspect of status. Central concept with regard to harassment, according to the socio-structural perspective, is men’s use of sexual vio- lence and discrimination to maintain power over women. From a socio-structural point of view, it is inherent to men’s (as a group) higher status in any society, compared with women’s (as a group), that men in general have more power than women. This relative power-differential is also reflected in many organizational relationships between men and women on an absolute level: An individual man can hold a higher position in an organization than an individual woman. Ac- cording to a socio-structural perspective, an important feature of a given harassment situation is the existence or absence of a power differential between harasser and harassee. Existence of a
Perception of harassment: Influence factors 45
power differential should lead to more severe harassment perceptions, compared with situations where a power differential is absent.
The evolutionary approach to harassment, on the other hand, focuses on the resource as- pect of status. This emphasis stems from the concept of harassment as having to do with sex, rather than with power. The higher the status of a man, the more material or immaterial resources he commands (e.g., money, respect of others, social prestige). In line with sexual strategies the- ory outlined above, men with high status are therefore desirable long term mates for women. It follows that sexual advances made by a man of high status should be perceived as more favora- bly.
However, to complicate matters, from a socio-structural perspective as well, in the absence of a power differential, a male harasser with good resources should also be perceived more fa- vorably, because having a relationship with high status men can be a means for women to attain high status by association. However, this hypothesis is qualified by certain conditions. Evidence for both perspectives is presented below.
9.4.1
Status from a power perspective
A number of studies have ascertained that status of a harasser is important to interpreta- tions of a given behavior as harassing or benign. In the USMSPB studies (1981, 1988, 1995), respondents were not only asked whether they defined several behaviors on a list as sexual har- assment, but were asked to give their judgments separately for supervisors and for colleagues. Over all studies and all behaviors, and for both genders, 10 percent more respondents defined behaviors as sexual harassment when the behaviors were presented as shown by a supervisor than when the behaviors were presented as shown by a colleague.
In the study on self-labeling presented before (Magley & Shupe, 2005), harassees were more likely to label their experience as sexual harassment when the perpetrator had power over them. Likewise, in their meta-analysis on gender differences in perception of harassing behaviors, Rotundo et al (2001) included existence or absence of a power-differential between perpetrator and victim as a potential moderator. On a descriptive level, men and women showed more con- vergent perceptions of harassment in the presence of a power differential, and more divergent perceptions of harassment in the absence of a power differential, although this difference was not significant. The earlier meta-analysis by Blumenthal (1998), on the other hand, has found a small-to-medium effect of harasser power over the harassee (average r = .31). Studying lay defi- nitions of sexual harassment, students, faculty, and staff of a university were more likely to per- ceive behavior displayed by people of higher status or greater authority as sexual harassment (Frazier et al., 1995). However, this did only explain three percent of the variance in how upset their sample reported to be about the behavior. Similarly, Cochran et al. (1997) found that har- assment by someone with authority over the victim was perceived as more distressing. From a power perspective, therefore, behavior by an individual with power over the target of the behav- ior, is more likely to be perceived unfavorably, that is, as harassing.
46 Perception of harassment: Influence factors
9.4.2
Status from a sexuality perspective
Despite the research presented in the previous section, from a sexuality perspective, the higher the status of a harasser is, the more welcome should the behavior be – with the qualifica- tion, one might add, that the behavior is not threatening, but allows some leeway to interpret it in a more favorable light. As high economic status is one of the features that contribute to higher ability (albeit not necessarily willingness) to invest in offspring, women should tend to evaluate the harassing behavior of a rich man or a man in a high status occupation with more benevolence than the behavior of a poor man or a man in a low status occupation. If interpretable as expres- sion of sexual interest, an advance by the former should increase one’s own chances of reproduc- tion more than an advance by the latter, which is discussed elsewhere (see Buss, 1994; 1999; Littler-Bishop, Seidler-Feller, & Opulach, 1982; Sadalla, Kenrick, & Vershure, 1987).
Black and Gold (2003) tested this assumption in a scenario study in which they varied ha- rasser status by describing his clothing as shabby (vs. expensive) and car owned as old (vs. new) as well as level of coercion (forceful with threat or without force and without threat). Overall, advances by apparently whealthy individuals were perceived as more acceptable than advances by apparently poor individuals. However, when the level of coercion was high, the status effect disappeared and the behavior was perceived as not acceptable.
In a rare attempt to compare the evolutionary and the socio-structural perspective on sexual harassment, Bourgeois and Perkins (2003) found support for the socio-structural perspective. In three experimental scenario studies, the authors varied power differential between harasser and participant (equal power, higher power and lower power) and harasser status (via employment position) simultaneously (experiment 1 and 2) and separately (experiment 3). Both male and female participants imagined to be more upset by harassers with higher power and status, com- pared with equal or lower power and status (experiments 1 and 2), with women generally imag- ining being more upset than men (on a descriptive level in experiment 1, significantly so in ex- periment 2 and 3). Furthermore, women imagined to be most upset by a higher status harasser when he had power over them, but this high status effect disappeared when there was no power differential (experiment 3). These mixed results are comparable to those from an earlier study on men’s dating desirability in which participants were asked to judge vignettes describing a man high versus low in dominance (Sadalla et al., 1987). Despite the fact that a man high in domi- nance received lower warmth, likability, and tenderness ratings, which point to less willingness to invest in children, he was also rated high on dating desirability and sexual attractiveness. However, these two differing associations with high dominance need not necessarily contradict each other when a man’s total mate value is concerned. Interpreting the results of Sadalla et al. (1987), Ellis points out that a woman “may want a man who is dominant (and therefore less “warm, likable, and tender”) when he is in competition with other men, but who is warm, likable, and tender toward her (Ellis, 1992), p. 277, italics added).
Perception of harassment: Influence factors 47
9.4.3
Influence of status: Summary
All in all, the two broad perspectives on harassment – namely, the evolutionary psycho- logical and the socio-structural approach – use the concept of status differently, although this is often not made explicit. As long as a power differential is involved, they also make different predictions about the role of harasser status for the perception of his (or her) behavior: From an evolutionary perspective, harasser status should lead to more favorable behavior interpretations, given that the behavior poses no threat, and regardless of a power differential. From a socio- structural perspective, whereas high status should also be connected to more favorable behavior interpretations, this effect should disappear when a power differential is present. In the absence of a power differential, predictions of both perspectives are hard to disentangle.
Status can be, and has been, operationalized in many ways beside in the rather narrow sense of occupying a certain stratum in a given society. Among these operationalizations are those of having power over others and having a large amount of resources at one’s own disposal. Proponents of both the evolutionary and the socio-structural perspective have used several of these operationalizations. For both perspectives, there is evidentiary support, but for the socio- structural perspective, it seems there is, numerically speaking, more evidence. This might have something to do with a tendency for harassment researchers to come from the socio-structural school of thinking. However, for the role of status and its different aspects, again, these data come mostly from scenario studies, and not from studies of actual harassment under controlled laboratory conditions. Therefore, any transfer of these studies to actual harassment cases can only be attempted very cautiously.
9.4.4
Implications and relevance of status for the studies presented in Part
Two
In the studies on actual harassment as well as the scenario studies in Part Two, the absolute power distribution between harasser and research participants is aimed to be equal. This is partly due to the fact that a power differential could increase stress for participants, which I wanted to limit as much as possible. In addition, the typical harassment case as reported in retrospective studies does not involve a power differential, because colleagues of the same hierarchical level as the harassee are most often the harassers. In order to increase external validity, this most typi- cal absolute power relation, equal power, was chosen for my own studies. However, the resource aspect of harasser status is one central part of experimental variations in the studies on actual harassment and one study with a scenario. Financial prospects and current availability of finan- cial resources of the male harassers is varied. Despite attempts at establishing an equal absolute power distribution in my studies, the relative power distribution between men and women on a societal level naturally remains unchanged.
48 Perception of harassment: Influence factors