The Effects of Prior Conduct, Legal Standards, and Investigative Interviews

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Workers are more likely to find that social sexual misconduct constitutes sexual harassment when the law encourages them to take the perspective of the complainant, (i.e., apply the reasonable woman as opposed to the reasonable person standard). To explain these findings, we developed a two-stage processing model in which workers reach a preliminary harassment judgment based upon well-rehearsed and easily retrievable attitude structures, such as hostile and benevolent sexism. In two studies full-time workers will view videotapes depicting action sequences in two influential sexual harassment cases. The first study manipulates legal standard (reasonable person vs. reasonable woman) and the complainant's initial behavior. Study 2 uses a similar paradigm but imposes the reasonable person standard on all participants. However, half the participants will expect a scrutinizing interview following the videotapes. We predict that those who do not expect an interview will react to their own hostile and/or benevolent sexist attitudes triggered by the complainant's conduct. However, those who anticipate an interview in which they must explain their judgments will correct their initial biases and examine the action sequence from an impartial point of view. A successful test of these hypotheses would suggest that in reasonable woman jurisdictions, organizations can sensitize workers by training them on the subtleties of the law, that is the difference between the reasonable woman and person's perspectives. In reasonable person jurisdictions, organizations could routinely interview all workers involved in or reporting suspicious conduct.