Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law

This model and prior research argue that people

informed of the law and motivated to do so will test the

unwelcomeness, severity, and pervasiveness of the inci-

dent(s) to evaluate the accuracy of their initial harass-

ment judgments. Observers use themselves as reference

points to determine whether ambiguous social sexual

conduct at work is unwelcome, severe, and/or perva-

sive. If the perceivers think that the unwelcome behav-

ior would have seemed sufficiently pervasive or severe

to themselves as targets, then they will conclude that it

was harassing for the complainant, to the extent to

which they perceive themselves to be similar to the

complainant.

Findings from several studies by Richard Wiener

and colleagues support the two-stage approach. In one

study, 50 male and 50 female workers completed semi-

structured interviews with card sorting and rating tasks.

The resulting mental concept maps showed that women

evaluated male harassers with attributes (i.e., intimida-

tion, arrogance, and popularity) related to the harassers’

power and social aptitude, but men evaluated male

harassers around the dimensions of responsibility and

psychological adjustment attributes (i.e., strength, con-

fidence, and being a bully). Women grouped female

victims along dimensions of blameworthiness and

assertiveness, relying heavily on security, upward

mobility, and gullibility as victim attributes. Men used

attributes of attractiveness, shyness, and anger to differ-

entiate between helpless and blameful victims who

were sexually aggressive or physically alluring.

Statistical analyses (logistic regression) produced accu-

rate gender classification for 86% of the sample using

these attributes.

In another study, this research team presented video-

tapes of equal employment opportunity officers inter-

viewing ostensible workers based on Rabidue v.

Osceola Refining Co.and Ellison v. Bradyfact patterns.

Two hundred full-time workers applied either the rea-

sonable person or reasonable woman legal standard and

rated the complained after conduct on unwelcomeness,

severity, pervasiveness, and harassment likelihood. The

main effect for gender was significant across cases.

However, self-referencing questions that asked respon-

dents how they would have perceived the conduct had

they been the complainant completely explained the

gender effects. Several additional studies replicated the

gender and self-referencing findings. In other results,

participants who applied the reasonable person (as

opposed to the reasonable woman) standard and those

high (as opposed to low) in hostile sexism found less

evidence of sexual harassment, regardless of gender or

case. Most notably, use of the reasonable person legal

standard offset the effects of hostile sexism so that the

difference in harassment judgments between high and

low hostile sexists disappeared under the reasonable

woman standard.

In more recent efforts, this research team presented

respondents with two scenarios (videotaped reenact-

ments of Rabidue v. Osceola Refining Co. and

Faragher v. City of Boca Raton,1998), which depicted

independent cross-gender allegations. A female com-

plainant in the first set of allegations displayed aggres-

sive, submissive, mixed, or neutral conduct. Most

interestingly, perceptions of complainant aggressive-

ness in the priming sequence lowered likelihood of

harassment judgments in the target sequence. The fact

that hostile attitudes toward women triggered by one

sequence of behavior influenced harassment judgments

of later new facts supports the automatic internal stan-

dard component of the social cognitive model. Finally,

hostile and benevolent sexism influenced judgments

under the reasonable person but not under the reason-

able woman standard. Current efforts are under way to

examine the implications of the two-stage model for

judgments that men and women make when males

accuse other males of harassment in multicultural

workplace scenarios. These efforts are looking more

closely at the effects of ethnicity and sexual orientation

as precursors to sexual harassment and other forms of

discrimination in the workplace, schools, and housing

markets. The extension of the social cognitive model of

discrimination in these settings is important in our

increasingly multicultural work, education, and living

environments.

Richard L. Wiener

See alsoSexual Harassment, Jury Evaluation of

Further Readings

Burlington Northern v. White,No. 05-529 (U.S. S. Ct.

June 22, 2006).

Clark County School District v. Breeden,532 U.S. 268

(2001).

Ellison v. Brady,924 F.2d 872 (9th Cir. 1991).

Faragher v. City of Boca Raton,524 U.S. 775 (1998).

Fitzgerald, L., Drasgow, F., Hulin, C., Gelfand, M., & Magley,

V. (1997). Antecedents and consequences of sexual

harassment in organizations: A test of an integrated model.

Journal of Applied Psychology, 82,578–589.

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