Organizational Status and Perceived Sexual Harassment: Detecting the Mediators of a Null Effect

TLDR

Power differentials are widely thought central to sexual harassment, yet prior studies find no clear link between a perpetrator’s organizational status and victims’ perceptions of harassment. The study forwards a model explaining the null effect of organizational status on harassment perceptions through two opposing mediators. The model tests how organizational status influences perceptions of power, which increase perceived harassment, and perceptions of social dominance, which decrease perceived harassment. The opposing effects cancel, yielding a null overall effect and supporting both sociocultural and evolutionary theories of harassment perceptions.

Abstract

Although power differentials are commonly believed to be central to sexual harassment experiences, prior empirical investigations have found no clear association between a perpetrator’s organizational status (as an index of his power) and perceptions by the victim that the perpetrator’s behavior constitutes sexual harassment. A model to explain this pattern as the result of two opposing mediators is forwarded and tested. Specifically, it was found that a harasser’s organizational status affects perceptions of his power, which increase a victim’s perceptions that the perpetrator’s behavior is harassing; however, it also was found that a harasser’s organizational status simultaneously affects perceptions of his social dominance, which decrease perceptions that his behavior is harassing. Thus, these mediators cancel each other, yielding a null finding when their effects are ignored. This finding supports both sociocultural and evolutionary models of sexual harassment perceptions and suggests that each can contribute to an understanding of sexual harassment experiences.