NCJ Number
165102
Journal
Law and Human Behavior Volume: 21 Issue: 1 Dated: (February 1997) Pages: 71-93
Date Published
1997
Length
23 pages
Annotation
This research tested the possibility that the reasonable woman test as compared to the reasonable person test of hostile work environment sexual harassment interacts with hostile and benevolent sexist beliefs and may trigger protectionist attitudes toward women who complain of sexual harassment.
Abstract
The ambivalent sexism inventory and fact patterns in two sexual harassment cases were administered to a sample of 320 (160 male, 160 female) participants recruited from undergraduate psychology and business courses at a midwestern university. Respondents were asked to make legally relevant decisions under either the reasonable woman standard or the reasonable person standard. It was found that those high in hostile sexism and women provided more evidence of sexual harassment. However, those high in benevolent sexism did not exhibit hostile sexism effects. Although men were less sensitive to the reasonable woman standard than women, the reasonable woman standard enabled both genders to find greater evidence of sexual harassment under some conditions. Results clearly support the effects of hostile sexism on the processing of information about hostile work environment sexual harassment, and findings are discussed from the perspectives of law and psychology. 64 references and 6 tables