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Situational and Individual Influences on Judgments of Hostile Environment Sexual Harassment 1
Author(s) -
Hurt Jennifer L.,
Maver Jillian A.,
Hofmann David
Publication year - 1999
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.1559-1816.1999.tb00145.x
Subject(s) - harassment , psychology , situational ethics , social psychology , personality , power (physics) , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , quantum mechanics , physics
The current research examines the judgment processes of third‐party evaluators of sexual harassment situations. Four situational variables were hypothesized to influence ratings of situation appropriateness and judgments of sexual harassment. The evaluator's gender and personality also were hypothesized to influence both ratings. Participants were 73 male and 51 female undergraduate students. Results indicated that behavior severity and victim response significantly influenced ratings. The frequency of the behavior influenced appropriateness ratings, but interacted with behavior severity for harassment judgments. The effects of the gender of the evaluator were mediated by the evaluator's level of tolerance for harassment. The effects of the power relationship and rater personality were not significant.