Premium
Some Effects of Brief Training Interventions on Perceptions of Sexual Harassment 1
Author(s) -
Moyer Robert S.,
Nath Anjan
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1998.tb01709.x
Subject(s) - harassment , psychology , perception , psychological intervention , affect (linguistics) , social psychology , significant difference , clinical psychology , applied psychology , medicine , communication , psychiatry , neuroscience
In 2 experiments, college undergraduates received brief sexual harassment training or were assigned to a control group; all participants then judged whether sexual harassment occurred in brief written scenarios which had been evaluated previously by experts. In the first study, training increased the tendency to perceive sexual harassment but did not enhance expertise. In the second experiment, training significantly increased perceptual expertise for men but not for women—thereby eliminating a gender difference which has been consistently reported in the sexual harassment literature. These are the first experimental demonstrations that training can influence perceptions of sexual harassment in a laboratory setting; whether training can measurably affect the perception, reporting, or incidence of sexual harassment in real life is not yet known.