Guys like us: The link between sexual harassment proclivity and blame

Abstract

The present study investigated whether or not a man’s proclivity to engage in sexual harassment impacts how he blames sexual harassers and their victims. One hundred nineteen male participants read hypothetical harassment scenarios and responded to Bartling and Eisenman’s (1993, Sexual harassment proclivities in men and women. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 31, 189–192) Sexual Harassment Proclivities scale. Results revealed that men high in the proclivity to harass blamed harassers less and victims more than did low-proclivity men. Furthermore, ratings of similarity of the perpetrator and relevance of the situation suggest that this differential pattern of blaming reflected a self-protective motivation proposed by Shaver’s (1970, Defensive attribution: Effects of severity and relevance on the responsibility assigned for an accident. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 14, 101-113) defensive attribution theory.

Keywords

attribution blame proclivity sexual harassment

Sexual harassment is an ongoing and pervasive problem (Silverschanz, Cortina, Konik, & Magley, 2008), but like other forms of social-sexual behavior, not everyone sees it in the same way. Whereas observers typically blame men for sexually harassing behavior, others find women to be blameworthy. With respect to this latter tendency, research has found that certain men tend to downplay the blameworthiness of a male harasser’s questionable behavior and instead shift the blame onto the female victim (Wiener, Winter, Rogers, & Arnot, 2004). The present study attempts to explain this pattern of blame as a function of a man’s sexual harassment proclivity and investigates a process that may help us understand why it occurs.

By and large, the research on blame for sexual harassment has focused on how the personal characteristics of harassers and victims affect attributions of blame (e.g., Ferguson et al., 2005). For example, research has documented that those with traditional sex-role beliefs are more likely to blame a victim than are those with less traditional sex-role beliefs (Jensen & Gutek, 1982). In addition, people employed in full-time positions, as opposed to full-time students, have been found to assign more blame to victims (De Judicibus & McCabe, 2001). More recent research has found that blame is dependent on an interaction between gender and work status, revealing that college men are more likely than college women to blame women who fit a “career woman” stereotype, but there is no gender difference among working adults (Haynie, 2007).

This research sought a different direction, one that investigates how an individual’s propensity to engage in sexually harassing behavior, or sexual harassment proclivity, is related to attributions of blame. What we know about the thoughts and behaviors of men who have a relatively high proclivity to sexually harass is suggestive. For example, a man’s sexual harassment proclivity has been shown to correlate positively with several social-sexual constructs, such as sex-role stereotyping, acceptance of rape myths, and adversarial sexual beliefs (Bartling & Eisenman, 1993; Bingham & Burleson, 1996; Pryor, 1987). In addition, men high in the likelihood to harass tend to endorse more hostile attitudes toward women than those low in the likelihood to harass (Begany & Milburn, 2002). Collectively, the endorsement of these stereotypical and negative attitudes might influence men high in the proclivity to harass to view women unfavorably in a social-sexual situation, to take the side of a man in a harassment dispute, and to attribute relatively more blame to women in such disputes than would be attributed by men low in the proclivity to harass.

Additional support for this hypothesis comes from research showing that sexual harassment proclivity is negatively correlated with variables that require one to understand the behavior and motivations of others, such as perspective taking and empathetic concern (Bartling & Eisenman, 1993; Pryor, 1987). Being less able to see and experience things from the perspective of others, men high in the proclivity to harass are (by definition) more likely to engage in behaviors that constitute hostile environment harassment (e.g., repeated requests for dates, suggestive comments, inappropriate physical contact; Fitzgerald, Swan, & Magley, 1997), yet they may be quite unable to appreciate the offensiveness experienced by the target of these behaviors. That they could see themselves engaging in the same behavior as a perpetrator may lead such a man to identify with the harasser and mitigate blame for his behavior, while relegating more blame to the target of the behavior (i.e., the female victim). Although there is research that has attempted to understand and explain the antecedents that account for such mitigation and/or redirection of blame strategies (e.g., De Judicibus & McCabe, 2001), we are aware of no research that explores the link between the proclivity to sexually harass and attributions of blame for harassment. Yet our review of the literature suggests a relatively simple and straightforward relationship: men who mitigate blame for sexual harassers and blame the victims may themselves have a higher potential to sexually harass women.

This hypothesized relationship is consistent with Shaver’s (1970) defensive attribution theory, which states that, if certain conditions are met, an individual judging the blameworthiness of an action may assess blame in a manner that is “self-protective” (Shaver, 1970; Shaw & McMartin, 1977). Specifically, Shaver theorizes that if a behavior occurs in a context that is familiar and relevant to a judge (i.e., if the context is high in situational relevance), and if the judge feels similar to and identifies with the person engaging in the behavior (i.e., high personal relevance exists), then the judge will engage in blame avoidance. In other words, the judge will blame the perpetrator less to avoid being blamed for similar behavior in future situations. Alternatively, if there is low personal relevance, then the judge will engage in harm avoidance in which she or he will blame the perpetrator more, possibly to protect her- or himself from becoming a victim of such behavior in the future. In instances of low situational relevance (i.e., circumstances in which the judge cannot easily imagine him- or herself), however, the need to engage in self-protective attributions is diminished. Therefore, high situational relevance serves as a necessary condition for the observation and study of blame and harm avoidance.

Defensive attribution theory has recently been applied to understand blame for other sexually aggressive behaviors, such as rape (Idisis, Ben-David, & Ben-Nachum, 2007), sexual assault (Lawler, 2003), and domestic violence (Witte, 2005). It has also been applied to investigations of blame in work settings (Gyekye & Salminen, 2006) and has been referenced in studies of sexual harassment perception (Bladen, 1998). These studies have repeatedly demonstrated that men attribute more blame to female victims than do women and have explained this gender difference from the perspective of defensive attribution theory, as has been the case in other harassment studies (Jensen & Gutek, 1982; Valentine-French & Radtke, 1989). This study extends this research by applying defensive attribution theory to an investigation of the blame attributed to harassers and victims in hostile environment sexual harassment scenarios.

The present study assessed sexual harassment proclivities in men and related these proclivities to differences in attributions of blame for hypothetical harassers and victims. We predicted that those high in the proclivity to harass would find the hypothetical sexual harassers to be more personally relevant and blame them less (i.e., engage in blame avoidance) than would those low in the proclivity to harass. We also predicted that men high in the proclivity to harass would blame victims more (i.e., engage in harm avoidance) than men low in the proclivity. We assessed elements of defensive attribution theory to determine whether or not the theory could account for these effects.

Method

Participants

One hundred nineteen college students participated in this study for extra course credit. Ages ranged from 18 to 28 (M = 21.97, SD = 2.41). The majority were Caucasian (n = 111, 93.3%) and single (n = 98, 82.4%). Men are typically the perpetrators of sexual harassment (see United States Merit Systems Protection Board, 1981, 1988) and are therefore the type of perpetrator most frequently studied (Kinsey, 2002). Consistent with this literature, all participants in our study and all perpetrators in our stimulus materials were male. Participants were recruited by posting flyers on bulletin boards around the psychology department and by announcements about the research in undergraduate psychology classes.

Materials

Bartling and Eisenman’s (1993) Sexual Harassment Proclivities (SHP) scale was chosen to assess participants' sexual harassment proclivity because it measures a tendency to engage in hostile environment harassment, a type of harassment that can be subtle and susceptible to differing interpretations (in contrast to quid pro quo harassment, which represents more overt exchanges of sexual favors and involves less interpretation; see Pina, Gannon, & Saunders, 2009). Hostile environment harassment is any behavior of a sexual or sexist nature that creates an uncomfortable working environment. It includes, among other behaviors, sexist remarks, repeated sexual advances, and the telling of sexual or sexist jokes (Fitzgerald et al., 1997).

The SHP scale has respondents rate their agreement with 10 statements (e.g., Women often are flattered by sexual advances by their coworkers) on individual five-point Likert-type scales (1 = strongly agree, 5 = strongly disagree). Total scores were obtained by summing across all 10 items and recoding so that higher scores indicated a higher proclivity to engage in hostile environment harassment. The SHP scale has demonstrated acceptable construct validity in previous research and is internally reliable (α = .86 for males; Bartling & Eisenman, 1993; α = .70 in the present sample).

Participants were also presented with a series of eight scenarios designed specifically for this research. These eight were selected from a larger pool of items based on feedback from students in earlier pilot research. The scenarios depicted men engaging in harassing behaviors toward women in a variety of workplace (e.g., restaurant, law offices, retail) and academic settings. The harassing behaviors in the scenarios were varied to represent the different hostile environment subtypes delineated by Fitzgerald et al. (1997). Below is a vignette that illustrates a sexist comment and the fallout from the interaction:

Jared and Susan work at the same restaurant. Tips have been very low all evening. Jared and Susan rely on their tips to pay bills and rent. Susan and Jared are complaining to each other. Jared remarks, “Maybe you’d have better luck if you showed some more skin.” Susan tells the manager that Jared is making her uncomfortable. This is not the first complaint about Jared. A week later, Jared is transferred to a restaurant in a different part of town.

Following each vignette, participants responded to questions assessing the situational relevance of the context (How likely is it that you could be in this kind of situation?), the personal relevance of the harasser (e.g., How much is Jared like you?), and the blame they attributed to both the harassing male and the female victim in the situation (e.g., How much is Jared to blame for his behavior toward Susan?). Each of these items was scored using a nine-point Likert-type scale (1 = not at all, 9 = very much).

Procedure

Packets of questionnaires were administered simultaneously to multiple participants in small groups. Administration took place in large empty college classrooms reserved from outside use to limit distraction. All experimenters were male and no females were present during data collection. Participants filled out a packet containing a demographic questionnaire (age, gender, marital status, and ethnicity), Bartling and Eisenman’s (1993) SHP scale, and then read the eight harassment vignettes and answered questions about each. Upon completion, participants were debriefed, thanked for their participation, and dismissed.

Results

The standard method for categorizing men as either high or low in the proclivity to harass is to perform a quartile split on participant scores and identify those in the most extreme quartiles as being either high or low on the dimension (e.g., Kinsey, 2002; Pryor & Stoller, 1994). In an effort to conserve sample size and to conduct a more conservative test of our hypotheses, we instead employed a tertile split. Men who scored 26 or lower on the SHP scale were categorized as having a low harassment proclivity (n = 40) and those scoring 30 or higher were categorized as having a high harassment proclivity (n = 40).

We then conducted an analysis to assess the adequacy of our stimulus materials. Six of the eight harassment vignettes were designed to be situationally relevant to participants by depicting contexts familiar to students, and two were designed to be irrelevant by depicting contexts not familiar to most college students. Results of t-test analyses confirmed that student contexts (M = 5.39, SD = 1.75) were perceived to be more situationally relevant than the other contexts (M = 2.53, SD =1.68), t(117) = –15.14, p < .001, d = 1.67, by both high- and low-proclivity men.¹ This confirmed that the vignettes designed to be high in situational relevance indeed were so.

We assessed the personal relevance of the harassers and the blame attributed to both the harassers and the victims by summing the personal relevance and blame attribution scores across the six vignettes high in situational relevance and computing personal relevance and blame indices. The personal relevance index could range from 6 to 54, with higher scores indicating greater perceptions of personal relevance (α = .80), and the harasser blame index (α = .74) and victim blame index (α = .81) were similarly scored.

Because of expected correlations between the dependent variables and to avoid alpha inflation, an initial multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to test for the effect of harassment proclivity on all outcomes. The personal relevance, harasser blame, and victim blame indices were submitted as dependent variables to the MANOVA with proclivity group as the independent variable. The MANOVA was significant (Wilks' Λ = .80; F(1, 78) = 6.31, p < .001, partial η² = .20), indicating differences between the high and low harassment proclivity groups.

Follow-up univariate analyses confirmed that, consistent with our hypothesis, high proclivity men (M = 17.28, SD = 9.08) judged other harassers to be more personally relevant than low proclivity men (M = 11.40, SD = 5.01), t(78) = 3.58, p < .001, d = .83. We also hypothesized that participants high in the proclivity to harass would attribute less blame to the harassers, but more blame to the victims, than would participants low in harassment proclivity. Consistent with these predictions, we found that high proclivity men (M = 46.43, SD = 6.25) attributed less blame to the harassers in the vignettes than low proclivity men (M = 48.63, SD = 4.44), t(78) = -1.82, p = .04, d = .41, and that high proclivity men (M = 13.60, SD = 7.80) attributed more blame to the victims of harassment than low proclivity men (M = 10.05, SD = 4.66), t(78) = 2.47, p = .008, d = .57. Thus, although the contexts were familiar to all participants, men high in the proclivity to sexually harass blamed perpetrators less and victims more than did men low in the proclivity to harass.

We next sought to directly investigate the process by which men attributed blame to harassers in the vignettes. As outlined above, defensive attribution theory (Shaver, 1970) suggests that a person observes an interpersonal episode, judges the situational and personal relevance of the episode and the actors, and then makes attributions about the actors based on this analysis. The hypothesized sequence of events begins with an observation that leads to an analysis of relevance, which then leads to an attribution. Little is said about whether or not particular types of people are more or less likely to view situations and others as relevant; it depends on both the persons and the situations.

In our research, we hypothesized that harassment proclivity affects the interpretation of the personal relevance of an actor, but not the situational relevance of the event, and our results are consistent with this hypothesis. Given that men both high and low in the proclivity to harass can view a context as being situationally relevant, the question then becomes whether or not, in the situationally relevant context, personal relevance is affected by harassment proclivity, which then affects the attribution of blame in the scenario. In other words, given a situationally relevant context, do differences in harassment proclivity cause men to judge the personal relevance of an actor differently, which then causes them to attribute blame differently? This was the subject of our final analysis.

To answer this process question, a mediation analysis was performed. We sought to determine whether or not assessments of the personal relevance of the harasser mediated the relationship between harassment proclivity and blame attributed to the harasser. A bootstrapping procedure was used with 2000 iterations due to the relatively small sample size. The Sobel test was significant (z = –2.70, p = .007), demonstrating that the relationship between harassment proclivity and blame for the harasser was mediated by personal relevance. As Figure 1 illustrates, the standardized regression coefficient between these two variables decreased to near zero when controlling for personal relevance (see Baron & Kenny, 1986). The other conditions of mediation were also met: harassment proclivity was a significant predictor of blame for the harasser and of personal relevance, and personal relevance was a significant predictor of blame while controlling for harassment proclivity. Thus, our data support the idea that men with a higher proclivity to harass, relative to those low in this proclivity, view another harasser as being more personally relevant, which then is associated with blaming the harasser less. This pattern of attribution is consistent with defensive attribution theory (Shaver, 1970) and suggests that a high harassment proclivity may lead to self-protective blame avoidance strategies.

Figure 1.

Standardized regression coefficients for the relationship between sexual harassment proclivity and blame attributed to the harasser as mediated by the personal relevance of the harasser. The standardized regression coefficient between harassment proclivity and blame controlling for personal relevance is in parentheses. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

Discussion

Our results suggest that there is a link between sexual harassment proclivity and attributions of blame in sexually harassing situations. Specifically, we found that men high in the proclivity to sexually harass considered hypothetical harassers to be more personally relevant than did those low in proclivity to harass, and that they consequently blamed the hypothetical harassers less and their victims more than those low in SHP.

We also obtained evidence that this pattern of results may be explained by defensive attribution theory (Shaver, 1970). The data support the interpretation that high-SHP men may have engaged in blame avoidance when judging hypothetical harassers, while the low-SHP men may have engaged in harm avoidance. Although these constructs were not directly assessed in our study, this interpretation is tenable given the judgments of personal relevance among the high- and low-SHP participants. Specifically, high proclivity men identified with the hypothetical harassers more than low proclivity men. This identification led them to blame the harassers less, which may have served the ego-protective function of blame avoidance suggested by Shaver (1970). By blaming the harassers less, the high-SHP men could anticipate similar lenient judgment should they behave similarly in the future. Conversely, low-SHP men identified with the harassers less, which led them to blame the harassers more. This pattern of blame may have enabled the low proclivity men to expect that such behavior would be censured in the future, the threat of which could protect them and others from future harm.

Of course, it is also possible that the identification experienced by the high-SHP judges led them to feel an ingroup association with the types of men who engage in sexual harassment. This association may have led them to show favoritism toward the harassers, whereas the low-SHP men felt no such association (i.e., harassers were perceived as outgroup members to them) and therefore felt no compulsion to engage in any favoritism. Such responding is consistent with social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), which posits that an ingroup favoritism bias elevates or maintains personal self-esteem (I’m a member of a good group, so I must be good) and can be evoked simply by realizing that one shares important attributes with a group. In this case, high-SHP men may have realized that the harassers were like them, which led them to both favor their ingroup (harassers) and disadvantage their outgroup (female victims; e.g., Tajfel & Billig, 1974), all in the service of esteem maintenance, rather than a concern for future outcomes. Low-SHP men, on the other hand, disfavored their outgroup (They’re harassers and I’m not like them) and sympathized with another (the women). Future research should more directly investigate the extent to which ego-protection and self-esteem maintenance influence judgments of sexual harassers by high- and low-SHP men.

In any event, it is noteworthy that our judges saw so much in so little so fast. Confronted merely with brief depictions of interpersonal behavior, men high and low in the proclivity to harass quickly formed evaluations of the harassers and their behavior. Knowing nothing more than a few sentences about specific interactions, participants still formed predictable evaluations of them and engaged in expected patterns of blame attribution. Clearly, the behavior of the perpetrators, devoid of other information, was sufficient to produce rapid judgments of both personal relevance and blameworthiness.

One implication of this research is that victims of hostile environment harassment, who avoid reporting what has happened to them out of a fear of being blamed or held responsible, may have reason to be concerned. Previous research has found that relatively few victims report sexual harassment (Tangri, Burt, & Johnson, 1982), possibly due to a fear of being blamed for their treatment (De Judicibus & McCabe, 2001; Valentine-French & Radtke, 1989). To the extent that victims report incidents to men who may be relatively high in the proclivity to sexually harass, they may run the risk of being blamed for the harassment themselves. This may be discouraging to the victims and may result in greater emotional and physical distress and, subsequently, in more frequent job turnover (see Dansky & Kilpatrick, 1997, for a review). It appears that fair judgments of blame for sexually harassing situations cannot be made by men who are motivated by self-protective, ego-defensive, ingroup concerns.

The results of this study also have implications for the workplace. Research has demonstrated that workplace sexual harassment results in negative work-related outcomes for the victim, including lower interpersonal job satisfaction, lower organizational commitment (Willness, Steel, & Lee, 2007), and higher turnover intentions (Shupe, Cortina, Ramos, Fitzgerald, & Salisbury, 2002). Such effects have been shown to be quite damaging to organizations, costing millions of dollars annually for Fortune 500 companies (The Human Equation, 2004). Being victimized by the harasser, only to be further victimized by being blamed for the harassment, may compound a victim’s humiliation and further impede her work. To the extent that harassers are the self-same individuals perpetrating the harassment and blaming the victims, organizations should take a more aggressive approach to screening for and controlling their actions.

There are, however, important limitations in our research. Only college-aged students were sampled. Furthermore, the dependent measure utilized only student-relevant scenarios and thus may not generalize to sexual harassment in the workplace. Moreover, only the proclivity to engage in hostile environment harassment was measured (SHP; Bartling & Eisenman, 1993). Given that sexual harassment does not occur exclusively in this population and context and includes more diverse behaviors, future studies should investigate more diverse samples, settings, and types of harassment.

As alluded to earlier, given that only relative measurements were assessed, it is unclear whether the high-proclivity group engaged in blame avoidance relative to the average person, the low-proclivity group engaged in harm avoidance relative to the same, or the results represent a combination of the two motivations within both the high- and low-proclivity subjects. In addition, the correlational design of this study limits our understanding of causality. As there was no experimental control over the independent variables, we cannot determine whether a proclivity to harass results in differential blame, if a personality dimension related to blame disposes one to sexual harassment, or if some other variable(s) might explain the connection between the two. Future research should address these important issues.

Despite these limitations, this research contributes to the understanding of sexual harassers and sexual harassment blame attribution. Combining the present findings with previous research, a clearer picture of individuals emerges of those who mitigate blame for sexual harassers: men who hold sexist attitudes, are employed full-time, and have a high sexual harassment proclivity (De Judicibus & McCabe, 2001; Jensen & Gutek, 1982; Valentine-French & Radtke, 1989). The present study demonstrates that, to the extent that harassers are “guys like us” to those who judge them, they are likely to suffer fewer, if any, sanctions for their behavior.

Footnotes

Notes

The author(s) declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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