Self-Labeling Sexual Harassment

This study was designed to examine personal, stimulus, and organizational factors that predict the self-labeling of sexual harassment. Hypotheses were developed based on the social cognitive schema framework, which suggests that the activation of a victim's schema of sexual harassment influences self-labeling incidents as sexual harassment. Results of a secondary analysis of the 1995 Department of Defense Gender Issues dataset generally supported the hypotheses in that self-labeling is a multi-faceted process. Several findings were in the opposite direction from that predicted (e.g., perceptions that the military was implementing sexual harassment policies were negatively associated with self-labeling). Alternative explanations for the complexity of the self-labeling process were also examined. Portions of this article were presented as a poster at the 2000 Association for Women in Psychology conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. Authorship is listed alphabetically, both authors contributed equally to this study.