Doctoral Dissertation: A Social Psychological Analysis of Resistance to Equal Opportunity Laws

这篇论文将发展和测试一种社会心理学理论，即旨在减少不平等的法律有时是如何被它们对人们对现有地位等级的信念的影响所破坏的。平等机会法适用于习惯和普遍的行为，因此发出了“正常人”需要改变的信息。当法律试图破坏社会互动的“正常”模式时，我确定了三个重要的阻力来源。前者是社会中社会群体之间公认的地位秩序，后两者是对法律所激发的现有特权和社会互动规范的感知威胁。虽然这篇论文将在理论层面上提出一个更大的问题，即抵制EO法的常见来源，但它将测试该论点在性骚扰法案件中的一个逻辑应用。我将使用实验研究方法来评估性骚扰政策对男性和女性关于性别地位和差异的信念的影响。在一项实验中，男性和女性与一名异性伴侣一起完成一项基于电脑的任务。在三个条件下，参与者在开始任务前阅读了学校的性骚扰政策，1)被告知男性在任务中的平均得分高于女性，2)在没有操纵的情况下完成任务，将对参与者的性别信念进行比较。参与者对性别差异的外显和内隐信念将被测量，然后在不同条件下进行比较，以显示性骚扰政策干预是否以不同于其他以任务为导向、性别突出的情境的方式激活不平等的性别信念。本研究的结果对理论和政策都有更广泛的影响。调查结果将显示某类性骚扰政策实施的效果。如果结果表明，作为官僚义务或作为避免法律威胁的手段传播的政策，激活了与政策目标背道而驰的信念，那么这些信息应该有助于组织更有效地实施政策。更一般地说，明确对法律的抵抗的性质对于理解人们在什么条件下动用法律、遵守法律、保护自己免受法律威胁，以及法律何时能激发意识形态的变化，都是很重要的。研究结果还应该为如何审查对其他《就业机会法》政策的抵制提供启发性证据，如种族骚扰、平权行动和性取向保护。

This dissertation will develop and test a social psychological theory of how laws aimed at reducing inequality are sometimes undermined by the effect they have on people's beliefs about the existing status hierarchy. Equal opportunity (EO) laws apply to behaviors that are customary and widespread, and thus send the message that "normal" people need to change. I identify three important sources of resistance that laws encounter when they work toward destabilizing "normal" patterns of social interaction. The first is the accepted status order among social groups in society and the latter two are perceived threats to existing privileges and norms of social interaction that the law provokes. While this dissertation will pose, at a theoretical level, a larger question about the common sources of resistance to EO laws, it will test just one logical application of that argument to the case of sexual harassment law. I will use experimental research methods to assess the effect of sexual harassment policies on men's and women's beliefs about gender status and difference. An experiment will be conducted in which males and females complete a computer-based task with a partner of the opposite sex. Three conditions will compare the gender beliefs of participants who are read the university's sexual harassment policy before beginning the task to 1) those who are told that men have higher average scores on the task than women and to 2) those who complete the task with no manipulation. Participants' explicit and implicit beliefs about gender difference will be measured and then compared between conditions to show whether sexual harassment policy interventions activate unequal gender beliefs in a way that differs from other task-oriented situations in which gender is made salient. The results of this study have broader impacts for both theory and policy. Findings will show the effect of a certain type of sexual harassment policy implementation. If the results suggest that policies disseminated as a bureaucratic obligation, or as a means of avoiding legal threat, activate beliefs that run counter to the policy's aims, this information should help organizations implement policies more effectively. More generally, specifying the nature of resistance to laws is important for understanding the conditions under which people mobilize the law, obey the law, and protect themselves from legal threat, as well as when a law can spur ideological change. The results should also provide suggestive evidence about how to examine resistance to other EO policies such as racial harassment, affirmative action, and sexual orientation protections.