Making the Sexual Harassment of Others Self-Relevant: The Roles of Identity Salience and Value Affirmation

• NCJ Number: 216761
• Journal: Social Justice Research Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Dated: December 2006 Pages: 500-526
• Author(s): Heather Smith; Dani Citti
• Date Published: December 2006
• Length: 27 pages
• Grant Number(s): MH62096 01 A1
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute of Mental Health
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This three-phase study examined how group-oriented versus individual-oriented participants would interpret the unfair treatment of another person (in this case: sexual harassment of a female undergraduate) who shared their group membership.

Abstract

The results indicated that group-oriented individuals who affirmed an important individual value had higher self-esteem than group-oriented individuals who did not affirm an individual value. This suggests that group-oriented individuals who affirmed an individual value had higher self-esteem because it allowed them to re-categorize themselves as unique individuals who were different from the victim in the scenario. Self-affirmation thus allowed participants to distance themselves from the in-group target of sexual harassment. The authors tested the hypothesis that affirming an important individual value might enable participants to cope with the unfair treatment of a group member because it would enable them to shift their attention away from the shared group membership and toward interpersonal differences. Moreover, the opportunity to affirm an individual value apart from a group orientation should influence personal self-esteem. In study 1, 59 female undergraduate students were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions and were primed to think of themselves as either belonging to a group of female undergraduates (group-orientation) or as a unique individual. All participants read a brief scenario depicting a male professor sexually harassing a female student. Participants were then asked to select and write about a value important to them or to select and write about a value that was least important to them. Finally, participants completed a short questionnaire measuring situational self-esteem, identification, and recommendations for the victim. Studies 2 and 3 were identical to study 1 except for the fact that the 66 female undergraduate participants in study 2 also completed a measure of fairness and the 71 female undergraduate students in study 3 were asked to identify the value that was either most or least important to female undergraduate students. ANOVA calculations were used to analyze the data. Tables, figures, footnotes, appendix, references