Perceptions of Peer Sexual Harassment Among High School Students

Perceptions of peer social–sexual interactions were examined in a group of high school students (N=150). Participants were presented with six brief vignettes that described three types of sexual harassment between adolescent peers: physical, verbal/visual, and derogatory. Two vignettes were written for each type of behavior to reflect either a sexually explicit or implicit behavior. Participants responded to Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale and the Attitudes toward Women Scale for Adolescents (AWSA), and then rated the sexually harassing nature of the behaviors. Sexual harassment ratings varied as a function of the type of behavior and the sexual explicitness with which it was displayed. Although consensus was reached regarding the sexually harassing nature of both the sexually implicit and explicit physical forms of behaviors, only when the verbal/visual behavior was explicitly displayed was it perceived as sexually harassing. Interactions among self-esteem, gender attitudes, and type of behavior were also noted. Irrespective of the explicitness with which it was displayed, rater characteristics were influential for both the verbal/visual and derogatory forms of harassment.     

Judgments and definitions of sexual harassment by high school students

This study considers how high school students perceive incidents of possible sexual harassment toward students and how they define sexual harassment. Thirty-five male and 38 female high school seniors (44% Asian-American; 40% white, non-Hispanic; 6% Indian-American; 4% African-American; 3% Hispanic; and 3% other ethnic groups) evaluated scenarios that varied the type of sexual harassment, the status of the initiator (either teacher or student), and the gender composition of the dyad (either male toward female or female toward male). As predicted, type of harassment influenced ratings of severity. Compared to male respondents, female respondents rated the scenarios as more severe. Teachers were judged more critically than students. Differences in status were more apparent at less severe levels of harassment. In defining harassment, students relied on four factors: the behavior itself, the target's reaction to the behavior, the perpetrator's intentions, and the relationship that existed between the two people. Overall, the findings underline the importance of examining high schools as a locale for harassment.This study was originally conducted by the first author as a Westinghouse Science project at Stuyvesant High School, with the guidance of the second and third authors.     

Contrapower Sexual Harassment: A Survey of Students and Faculty Members

We conducted two studies to shed light on contrapower sexual harassment in an academic setting. In the first study, we surveyed a random sample of 158 college students (83.4% White) concerning their potentially sexually harassing behaviors toward professors, sexist attitudes toward women, and proclivities to harass sexually. Almost one third of the students reported having sexually harassed a professor at least once. Male students were more likely than female students to be the perpetrators. In the second study, all tenured and tenure-track faculty were mailed a survey; 209 professors (88.9% White) completed the survey concerning their experiences with sexual harassment from students as well as their coping responses, definitions of sexual harassment, and reactions to hypothetical scenarios. Over one half of the professors reported having been at least once sexually harassed by students. Although male and female professors experienced similar rates of sexual harassment from students, the psychological outcome was worse for women than for men. Male and female professors defined sexual harassment similarly. However, when more contextual information was provided in the hypothetical scenarios, several gender differences emerged. In addition, men and women used both internal and external coping responses to different types of sexual harassment. Sexual harassment as both a tool and a result of male dominance in society is discussed.     

The Impact of Religious Commitment on Women’s Sexual Self-Esteem

Religious commitment is associated with decreased sexual activity, poor sexual satisfaction, and sexual guilt, particularly among women. The purpose of this paper was to investigate how religious commitment is related to sexual self-esteem among women. Participants included 196 female undergraduate students, 87 % of whom identified as Christian. Participants completed the Sexual Self-Esteem Inventory for Women (SSEI-W), Religious Commitment Inventory-10, Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale, Brief Sexual Attitudes Scale, and a measure of their perception of God’s view of sex. Results suggested that women with high religious commitment held more conservative sexual attitudes. Significant relationships between religious commitment and two subscales (moral judgment and attractiveness) of the SSEI-W revealed that women with high religious commitment were less likely to perceive sex as congruent with their moral values and simultaneously reported significantly greater confidence in their sexual attractiveness. A significant relationship between religious commitment and overall sexual self-esteem was found for women whose religion of origin was Catholicism, such that those with higher religious commitment reported lower sexual self-esteem. A hierarchical regression analysis revealed that high religious commitment and perception that God viewed sex negatively independently predicted lower sexual self-esteem, as related to moral judgment. Implications of the findings are provided.     

The Relationship of Sex, Sex Role, and Mental Health

Mental health differences due to sex, sex-role identification, and sex-role attitudes were investigated using 109 undergraduate students. Females reported higher levels of depression and anxiety. Both males and females with more liberal scores on the Attitudes Toward Women Scale scored higher on the Well-Being Scale of the California Psychological Inventory. No differences due to androgyny were found.     

Sexual harassment of university students

The sexual harassment of junior, senior, and graduate student women and men by male and female professors, graduate assistants, and staff was investigated to determine students' personal experiences in the classroom, outside the classroom, and in job-related settings. Usable survey responses were returned by 393 students, and incidents were detailed by 38 women and 9 men who noted their responses to the harassment and its effects. Attitudes toward and acceptance of sexually harassing behaviors were measured by a 10-item Tolerance for Sexual Harassment Inventory (TSHI). The frequency of initiation of sexual behaviors was also assessed. More women than men reported being sexually harassed. Male and female perceptions of classroom behaviors were in agreement for most items. Men and women differed significantly on the TSHI, with men more tolerant of sexual harassment than women, and highly significant age differences were found, indicating a greater acceptance of sexual harassment by younger students. There was little difference between male and female students in the frequency of their initiating sexual behaviors. The TSHI was assessed; reliability coefficients and a factor analysis are presented.This research was supported by a grant from the College of Arts and Sciences. We are grateful to Betty Jones and Joan Bentley for their secretarial assistance.     

THE EFFECTS OF SEXUALLY VIOLENT ROCK MUSIC ON MALES'ACCEPTANCE OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

The effects of sexually violent music on undergraduate males'( N = 75) attitudes toward women, acceptance of violence against women, and self-reported sexual arousal were evaluated. The experimental manipulation involved exposure to sexually violent heavy-metal rock music, Christian heavy-metal rock music, or easy-listening classical music. One month before the experimental manipulation, participants were administered two covariate measures (religious orientation and sex-role orientation); the Attitudes toward Women Scale; the Sex-Role Stereotyping, Adversarial Sexual Beliefs, Acceptance of Interpersonal Violence, and Rape Myth Acceptance subscales from the Sexual Attitudes Survey; and a sexual arousal index. The results indicated that males with an extrinsic religious orientation were more accepting of sexist and rape-supportive beliefs. Exposure to heavy-metal rock music, irrespective of lyrical content, increased males sex-role stereotyping and negative attitudes toward women. An unexpected finding was grearer self-reported sexual arousal in response to classical music. Results are discussed with respect to participant and stimulus characteristics and experimenters'gender.     

Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: Exploring the Effects of Attractiveness on Perception of Harassment

This study was designed to explore the effect of attractiveness on perceptions of sexual harassment. Male and female college students (N = 150) rated four scenarios depicting ambiguous incidents of sexual harassment, each paired with photos of a male boss and a female secretary. Male and female attractiveness was varied in a 2 × 2 factorial design. Participants were asked to rate each photo on a series of traits before making harassment judgments. Overall, females perceived more harassment. The behavior of attractive males was less likely to be seen as harassing. Attractive females were more likely to be seen as harassed, especially when the potential harasser was unattractive. The possible mechanisms underlying the effects of attractiveness were explored with the results supporting a direct effect of stereotypes over a mediating role for implicit personality theories.     

Ideology or experience? The relationships among perceptions,attitudes, and experiences of sexual harassment in university students

Relationships among sexual harassment experiences, perceptions about harassment (definitions, seriousness ratings, commonness estimates), and attitudes (about both harassment and sex roles) were examined in order to investigate the role of ideology and consciousness in the reporting of sexual harassment experiences. University students responding to a survey were divided by sex (74 males, 136 females) and level of harassment experience (high, moderate, low) in a 3×2 factorial design. Results indicated that high experiencers estimated that sexual harassment was made common among other students than those with less experience. Other perceptual variables and attitudes were unrelated to experience level. Significant sex differences were present for definitions, for the Sexual Harassment Attitude Scale, and for the Macho Scale. Significant relationships were also present among definitions, seriousness ratings, and the two attitude measures. Results suggest that reporting experiences of harassment appears relatively independent of ideology or a sensitized consciousness. Implications for issues of representativeness of samples in harassment survey research are discussed.This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant in Aid of Small Universities for UPEI.We gratefully acknowledge the invaluable work of our research assistants, Katie McInnis and Anne Marie McInnis.     

Students’ Perceptions of Sexual Harassment: Is It Harassment Only If the Offender Is a Man and the Victim Is a Woman?

The present study investigated 3 potential sources of variability in university students' perceptions of sexual harassment in hypothetical professor-student scenarios: raters'gender, gender of the professor and student, and rater' own sexual harassment. Participants were most likely to identify the interactions as harassment when they involved a male offender and a female victim. They were less likely to label the behaviors as harassment when they occurred between members of the same gender or between a female professor and a male student. Women were more open to viewing the scenarios as harassment and men were unlikely to view the interactions between a female professor and a male student as harassment. Personal history of sexual harassment did not influence participants' perceptions.     

The power of the majority: Social conformity in sexual harassment punishment selection

In his famous social conformity experiments in the 1950's, Asch found 75% of participants conformed to confederates’ incorrect answers at least once, with an overall conformity rate of 32%, revealing that humans are highly likely to conform to group behavior even when that behavior is clearly wrong. The purpose of this study was to determine if the social conformity effect generalized to scenarios involving sexual harassment punishment selections in the workplace. Participants read various workplace sexual harassment scenarios and then witnessed four confederates chose one of three types of punishments (verbal warning, 1-week suspension, or termination). The confederates stated aloud punishments that were either appropriate (i.e., similar to normative data) or inappropriate (i.e., deviating either too harshly or leniently to normative data). Participants then provided their punishments selection aloud, and confidentially rated their decision confidence. We found an overall conformity rate of 46%, as 82.67% conformed at least once to harsh or lenient punishment selections. Participants who conformed to incorrect punishment selections exhibited lower levels of decision confidence, indicating that conformity may have been due more to social normative influence. The current results imply the social responses of others (i.e., coworkers, supervisors, or HR) can impact responses to sexual harassment. The results imply that social influence may be a significant contributing factor in mislabeling, misreporting, or inappropriately punishing sexual harassment in some organizations.     

A threatening exchange: Gender and life history strategy predict perceptions and reasoning about sexual harassment

Sexual harassment is a serious societal issue, with extensive economic and psychological consequences, yet it is also an ill-defined construct fundamentally defined in terms of subjective perception. The current work was designed to examine the ways in which individual differences between people are systematically related to different perceptions of sexual harassment scenarios, as well as reasoning about those harassment situations. Participants (N = 460) read several possible harassment scenarios and rated how uncomfortable they would find them. They then also evaluated a quid pro quo sexual harassment situation in terms of their interpretation of it as a threat or a social exchange and completed a deductive reasoning task about the same situation. Females and individuals with slow life history strategies were more uncomfortable with potential harassment situations and were more likely to interpret the quid pro quo scenario as a threat. Further, interpreting the scenario as a threat was associated with poorer performance on the deductive logic task, compared to those who interpreted the scenario as a social exchange.     

Perceptions of Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

This study attempted to test assumptions derived from the sex-role spillover model of sexual harassment developed by Gutek and Morasch (1982). One hundred fourteen male and 120 female undergraduates were asked to read scenarios describing potentially sexually oriented behaviors toward women in three different types of job settings (job types: female dominated, male dominated, and mixed). The independent variables were (a) the status difference between the supervisor and subordinate (small vs. large), (b) job type, (c) sex of subject, and (d) sex type of subject (same-sexed, cross-sexed, androgynous, or undifferentiated). The results indicated that ambiguous behaviors are perceived as being more sexually harassing in male dominated and mixed settings than in female dominated settings. The implications for future theory and research on sexual harassment are discussed.     

A Cross-cultural Perspective on Judgments of Woman-to-woman Sexual Harassment: Does Sexual Orientation Matter?

We investigated perceptions between Brazilian and U.S. college students regarding a hypothetical case involving woman-to-woman sexual harassment in which the sexual orientation of both the target and the alleged harasser was experimentally manipulated. Thus, there were four different scenarios, which were randomly given to 952 college students (89% of whom reported to be White). We found that the scenario that depicted heterosexual woman-to-heterosexual woman sexual harassment was rated as the least likely to be sexual harassment, to need an investigation, and to be punishable than the other scenarios. Generally, Brazilians viewed the case as more likely to be sexual harassment and to need an investigation than did U.S. respondents. In the U.S., women perceived the case as more likely to be sexual harassment, to need an investigation, and to be punishable than men did; however, no such gender differences were found in Brazil. Lastly, hostile sexism and perceptions of woman-to-woman sexual harassment predicted respondents rating the case as sexual harassment and in need of an investigation.     

A hierarchy of sexual harassment

Undergraduate students (143 males, 100 females) and working women (n = 48) read 18 scenarios depicting a wide range of types of sexual harassment behaviors and indicated whether they personally perceived each type of behavior to be sexual harassment. A hierarchy of harassment was developed on the basis of the subjects' perceptions. Potential differences between the perceptions of working women and female students and between the perceptions of male and female students were also investigated. Although a general consensus emerged regarding the relative perceived severity of the different types of sexual harassment, the percentage of working women who considered the behaviors to be sexual harassment was greater than the percentage of female students who considered them so.     

Relationship between sex-role attitudes and personality traits and the revised sex-role behavior scale

Two hundred college men and women completed self-report measures of sex-role traits (Personal Attributes Questionnaire), attitudes (Attitudes Toward Women Scale), and behavior (Sex-Role Behavior Scale). Intercorrelations among the three measures were examined to test two competing theoretical perspectives which dominate sex-role research today. The social learning point-of-view of Janet Spence and her colleagues asserts a general independence of sex-role personality traits, attitudes, and behaviors. The cognitive-developmental theory of Sandra Bem asserts that sex-role phenomena are fairly closely interrelated, at least for sex-typed individuals whose gender schemas cause them to adhere closely to traditional sex-role norms in their self-concepts and behavior. Findings of moderate relationships between masculine, feminine, and sex-specific personality traits, and the corresponding interest/behavior scales of the Sex-Role Behavior Scale, and between sex-role attitudes and behaviors lend partial support to both perspectives.     

Correlates of attitudes toward sexual harassment among early adolescents

A survey of 458 early adolescents (87% White; 278 females and 280 males; Mage = 13) examined the interacting relationship between family environment and involvement with pop music, and attitudes toward sexual harassment, while also controlling for sex. Attitudes toward sexual harassment were assessed by an eight-item Likert-type scale constructed from common behavioral definitions of sexual harassment (reliability alpha = .89). Results indicated females held less accepting attitudes toward sexual harassment than males. Involvement with pop music was associated with acceptance of sexual harassment, especially for females. The combination of a high level of exposure to pop music videos, and being from an unsatisfactory or nonintact family, was strongly associated with acceptance of sexual harassment for females and less so for males. The findings of this study could have implications for the etiology of acceptance of other coercive behaviors among adults.

     

DEFINITIONAL RESEARCH ON AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT

A total of 100 African American undergraduate students were given the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ) (Fitzgerald et al., 1988) and an open-ended question assessing experiences of sexual harassment. Results showed a significant frequency of sexual imposition (19%), particularly sexual touching. Participants also clearly delineated a new category of sexual harassment previously untapped by largely Caucasian studies: comments or sexual attention based solely on racial stereotypes or racially based physical features. In conclusion, the reported differences with regard to experiences and definitions of sexual harassment indicate that previous assumptions of homogeneity of experience (with Caucasian women being the standard) appear to be incorrect.     

Sex-role attitudes: Who should raise consciousness?

Attitudes of teachers and counselors-in-training toward women's roles, sex-role identity, and tolerance for gender-role norm violators were examined following a semistructured consciousness-raising group. Significant differences were found between the two treatment groups on the Attitudes Towards Women Scale. The results are discussed in terms of social reinforcement of a feminist model as instructor. The study casts doubt on the generalizability of traditional attitudes among helping professionals and raises the practical question of who should teach courses and workshops in sex-fair counseling.