Sexual harassment (unwelcome and inappropriate sexual remarks or physical contact) harms people in schools and workplaces. One potential problem with sexual harassment is whether people who report it are taken seriously. Unfortunately, when people report sexual harassment, their claims are not always believed, which means perpetrators can go uninvestigated and victims' harassment might continue.
The press recently covered an important series of studies that investigated the role that physical appearance plays in the reporting (and believing) process. One of the summaries appeared in the Seattle Times; another appeared on the APA website. The Seattle Times journalist summed up the studies like this:
The study found people are more apt to believe sexual harassment claims by women who are young, “conventionally attractive,” and appear and act feminine. Women who don’t fit that prototype not only are less likely to be believed, but also are presumed to be unharmed by harassing behavior, the study said.
The APA website does a better job detailing the methods:
The researchers conducted a series of 11 multimethod experiments, involving more than 4,000 total participants, designed to investigate the effect a victim’s fit to the concept of a typical woman had on participants’ view of sexual harassment and the consequences of that mental association.
In five of the experiments, participants read scenarios in which women either did or did not experience sexual harassment. Participants then assessed the extent to which these women fit with the idealized image of women, either by drawing what they thought the woman might look like or selecting from a series of photos. Across all the experiments, participants perceived the targets of sexual harassment as more stereotypical than those who did not experience harassment.
The details above describe a set of experiments (do you know why they are experiments?)
a) What was the main independent variable (IV) in the five studies above? What were its levels?
b) What was the main dependent variable (DV) in the five studies? What do you think its levels were?
c) The image (with the two drawings, above) that goes with this post came from the first study (Study 1), in which participants read a scenario in which " women either did or did not experience sexual harassment" and made a "drawing what they thought the woman might look like". Which drawing do you think came from each condition?
d) The drawings from Study 1 had to be coded for stereotypical femininity. Since this variable required coding, inter-rater reliability would have been important. How do you think the researchers established inter-rater reliability for their coders? (Hint: you can find relevant information in Chapter 5.)
e) Sketch a small bar graph depicting the results of these studies, based on the journalist's description.
Now here's some more description from the APA website:
In the next four experiments, participants [read] ambiguous sexual harassment scenarios, such as a boss inquiring about a woman’s dating life. These scenarios were paired with descriptions or photos of women who were either stereotypical or not. The participants then rated the likelihood that the incident constituted sexual harassment.
f) What was the main independent variable (IV) in these four studies? What were its levels?
g) What was the main dependent variable (DV) in the four studies? What do its levels seem to have been?
h) Sketch a small bar graph depicting the results based on the journalist's description.
i) Assess the plausibility of this claim: "Being more stereotypically feminine causes people to think a woman's sexual harassment claim is true" Apply the three causal criteria (covariance, temporal precedence, and internal validity).
Instructors: Students are likely to enjoy reading the studies in the original journal article, which appears on my list of journal articles that are student-friendly.
