Antecedents of Gender Harassment: An Analysis of Person and Situation Factors

Two laboratory studies examined the impact of person and situation factors in the prediction of gender harassment. Male undergraduates from a mid-sized Midwestern university in the U.S. were recruited based on an assessment of sexist attitudes. It was predicted that, across two studies, characteristics of one’s personality (sexist attitudes) and situational characteristics (sexual priming and masculine identity threat) would produce unique and interactive effects in the prediction of gender harassment, defined behaviorally as the number of sexist questions asked of women during a mock job interview, and cognitively as negative evaluations of the female interviewee. Across both studies, results support the predictions that both person and situation factors are important to understanding gender harassment.