Do attitudes like sexism, feminism, gender role identity or specific attitudes toward har- assment influence perceptions of potentially harassing behaviors? This question has long been a focus of harassment research (e.g., Mazer & Percival, 1989a; Powell, 1986). At first, this re- search was conducted because some defense counsels attempted to discredit plaintiffs by asking them for feminist attitudes. In essence, the argument is that of feminist “men haters” seeing har- assment everywhere, even in the most innocent behavior. Reversing that argument, more tradi- tional women should perceive identical behaviors as less harassing. Part of a traditional gender ideology is a potentially problematic sexual double standard (Muehlenhard & McCoy, 1991): Men are expected to be sexually daring whereas women are expected to be sexually shy. Previ- ous works (Gender Schema Theory, Bem, 1981, and Powell & Butterfield, 1979) suggest that traditional sex-typing (i.e., feminine-typed women and masculine-typed men as measured with the Bem Sex Role Inventory, Bem, 1974) includes viewing men’s sexual boldness and women’s sexual shyness as the norm. Therefore, traditional women should be more likely to view sexual advances as the norm rather than a transgression. In a test of this reversed prediction, Powell (1986) conducted a study on subjective harassment definitions in relation to the gender schema. However, predictions were only partly supported: Besides a main effect for biological sex, mas- culine-typed men were less likely to define a given behavior as sexual harassment, whereas both feminine-typed women and men and masculine-typed women were more likely to define a given behavior as sexual harassment.
To test the original prediction of more perceived own harassment experience with more feminist attitudes, Mazer and Percival (1989b) conducted an early scenario study combined with a retrospective survey, which were replicated 16 years later (Saperstein, Triolo, & Heinzen, 1995). In both the original study and the replication, the assumption that feminists reported more previous experience was not supported. In addition to own experience, the authors asked male and female students, e.g., whether they defined the scenario incidents as sexual harassment and how common they thought these behaviors were at the university. In addition, two measures of gender role traditionality and tolerance toward sexual harassment were administered in the origi- nal study. The only relationship was between own previous experience and commonness percep- tions: Those with more experiences of sexual harassment perceived it as more common than those with less experiences of sexual harassment. Neither of the attitudes had a significant rela-
Perception of harassment: Influence factors 41
tion to own experience. However, in the original study, the more traditional the gender role ori- entation of a participant, the more tolerant they were toward sexual harassment in the scenario. Furthermore, traditionality and tolerance toward harassment were negatively correlated with se- riousness perceptions and definition of the incidents as sexual harassment. Unlike data from the majority of other studies on perception, Mazer and Percival (1989b) did not find a gender effect for seriousness perception, but Saperstein et al. (1995) did, and the well-known gender effect was present in both studies for definitions: Women defined more behaviors as sexual harassment than men. In a related vein, in an undergraduate sample, students with high self-esteem and tradi- tional gender role attitudes were most tolerant of harassment and expected least negative conse- quences for a female harassee (Malovich & Stake, 1990).
These works are early examples for research focusing on the influence of gender-related attitudes on harassment perceptions. Recently, measures of sexist attitudes are often applied as proxies for measures of gender role orientation (e.g., Herzog, 2007; del Prado Silvàn-Ferrero & Bustillos López, 2007). In a study applying the Old Fashioned Sexim Scale (Swim & Cohen, 1997), Herzog (2007) found biological sex and traditional gender role orientation to be strongly related to severity ratings and proposed punishment for harassment: Men and those with tradi- tional gender role orientation perceived less severe harassment and proposed less severe punish- ment.
A measure dominating this line of research is the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI, Glick & Fiske, 1996). The authors explicate how unequal power distribution and interdepend- ence between men and women have given rise to ambivalent attitudes toward women and men. Subjectively positive and openly hostile subcomponents are part of both ambivalent attitudes toward men and women, but the scale measuring attitudes toward women, the ASI, was much more widely used than its complement, the Ambivalence Toward Men scale (AMI, Glick & Fiske, 1999). With its benevolent sexism subscales, ASI and AMI are innovative (Masser & Abrams, 1999), compared with previous measures of sexism that measured only hostile attitudes (e.g., Campbell, Schellenberg, & Senn, 1997; Swim, Aikin, Hall, & Hunter, 1995; Swim & Cohen, 1997; Tougas, Brown, Beaton, & Joly, 1995). The subjectively benevolent and openly hostile attitudes toward the other sex constitute a set of complementary, system stabilizing and system justifying attitudes (Jost & Banaji, 1994): Women who restrict themselves to traditionally female domains are rewarded, whereas those who leave these domains and challenge male domi- nance are punished (Glick, Diebold, Bailey-Werner, & Zhu, 1997).
Several studies have established a relationship between ambivalent sexism and sexual vio- lence as well as several aspects of harassment. Possible negative effects of hostile sexism are obvious, but subjectively benevolent attitudes can also have detrimental effects, especially on women who behave contrary to traditional gender role prescriptions. Highly benevolently sexist people assign more responsibility to a victim of aquaintance rape when she is presented as adul- terous wife (Viki & Abrams, 2002). Similarly, people high in benevolent and hostile sexism per- ceive women differently: Benevolence, but not hostility, is a good predictor for victim blame in acquaintance rape, but not stranger rape, whereas hostility, but not benevolence, is a good pre- dictor for rape proclivity in acquaintance rape (Abrams, Viki, Masser, & Bohner, 2003). Fur-
42 Perception of harassment: Influence factors
thermore, perceiving the women in the scenarios as violating traditional gender roles or seduc- tress eager for sex mediated the effects of benevolence and hostility on the dependent variables.
Besides these studies on rape, a number of studies have used the ASI (but not the AMI) to explore its relationship with various aspects of harassment. Testing a model to predict LSH from authoritarianism, with hostility, benevolence, and rape myth acceptance as mediators, Begany and Milburn (2002) confirmed hostility and rape myth acceptance as mediators, but not benevo- lence. This is in line with the theoretical assumption that hostility, but not benevolence, sanctions negatively. Likewise, individual differences in harassment evaluations can be traced back to hos- tility, but not benevolence (O’Connor, Gutek, Stockdale, Geer, & Melançon, 2004). Tolerance toward harassment is also significantly predicted by ambivalence and hostility, but not benevo- lence (Russel & Trigg, 2004). For women, but not for men, two further studies have shown that high hostility, but not benevolence, is related to finding less evidence for sexual harassment in case scenarios (Wiener, Hurt, Russel, Mannen, & Gasper, 1997; Wiener & Hurt, 2000).
Overall, the reported evidence on the role of attitudes for several aspects of harassment rather supports the socio-structural account of harassment. If harassment was purely well-meant by male harassers, and recognized as such by the male participants in the abovementioned stud- ies, hostility toward women should not be positively related to more tolerance toward sexual harassment, to finding less evidence for sexual harassment, and to likelihood to sexually harass.
9.2.1
Implications and relevance of attitudes for the studies presented in
Part Two
In order to control for the influence of sexist attitudes and gender role orientation on per- ceptions of harassment, the ASI (Glick & Fiske, 1996), AMI (Glick & Fiske, 1999) and a meas- ure of normative gender role orientation (Athenstaedt, 2000) were included in the studies of ac- tual harassment. To date, there are (to my knowledge) no published studies on actual harassment that include such measures. Therefore, it is unknown whether the well established attitude and gender role effects from scenario studies can be replicated in studies of actual harassment.