SBP: Prototypes and Perceptions of Sexual Harassment

性骚扰很普遍。它对其目标产生有害影响，包括脱离和退出工作和学校，表现下降，增加焦虑、抑郁和身体症状，对健康造成不利影响。性骚扰的影响不仅限于这些事件所针对的个人。例如，它可能会破坏组织成果，导致人力资本损失、组织多样性降低、生产率和利润下降，并造成财政损失。为了补救性骚扰的影响并降低这些成本，要求人们能够在性骚扰发生时感知和识别它。然而，研究表明，无论是性骚扰的目标还是社会上的其他人，性骚扰都被严重低估了。这个项目探索了阻止个人认知性骚扰的一个重要的潜在障碍。它关注的是人们对女性的心理形象，以及这些心理形象如何影响对性骚扰的感知。这个项目的概念发展比较了狭隘的传统女性形象(如白人、异性恋、传统女性)和更广泛的女性形象，包括那些不是白人、不是异性恋或不是传统女性的人。通过发现扩大谁经历过性骚扰的形象的方法，性骚扰应该更容易被识别。由于查明性骚扰是解决问题的根本，因此，了解和解决认识到性骚扰的障碍对于实现公民权利以及降低在性骚扰未被发现时存在的个人和社会的成本至关重要。该项目使用实验室和现场方法来调查人们对性骚扰对象的形象与他们的女性形象之间的关系。这些研究考虑了性骚扰目标的形象是否与传统女性形象重叠，以及女性与传统女性形象越接近，观察者和潜在目标是否更容易察觉到性骚扰。最后一组实验探讨了扩大遭受性骚扰的女性类型的形象是否会增加针对那些不符合传统女性形象的女性的性骚扰观念。这些研究的参与者包括大学生、非学生成年人和法律看门人。传统的妇女身份是按照妇女内部不同的人格维度运作的，并使用与传统妇女形象不同程度重叠的更广泛的群体身份(如种族、性取向)。这项研究将确定一个潜在的障碍，阻止人们对性骚扰的看法，并将提出低成本的解决方案，可以消除这个障碍。该项目将有助于研究民权法律的学者和实践者，以及寻求解决性骚扰问题的组织。有关最佳做法的证据将在开发更有效的性骚扰方法、最终改善劳动力多样性和减轻性骚扰对其目标的有害影响方面发挥重要作用。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Sexual harassment is widespread. It has harmful effects on its targets, including disengagement and withdrawal from work and school, decreased performance, and increased anxiety, depression, and physical symptoms that adversely affect health. The effects of sexual harassment extend beyond those personally targeted by these incidents. For example, it can undermine organizational outcomes, leading to a loss of human capital, reduced organizational diversity, lowered productivity and profits, and fiscal damages. To remedy the effects of sexual harassment and lessen these costs requires that people are able to perceive and recognize sexual harassment when it occurs. Yet research shows that sexual harassment is extremely under-reported both by its targets and by others in society. This project explores one important potential barrier that prevents individuals from perceiving sexual harassment. It focuses on people's mental images of womanhood, and how those mental images influence the perception of sexual harassment. The conceptual development of this project compares narrow mental images of traditional womanhood (as White, straight, traditionally feminine) with broader mental images of womanhood that include those who are not White, not straight, or not traditionally feminine. By uncovering ways to broaden the image of who experiences sexual harassment, sexual harassment should be more readily identified. Because identifying sexual harassment is fundamental to its resolution, understanding and addressing the barriers to perceiving sexual harassment is essential to the realization of civil rights as well as to reducing costs to individuals and society that exist when sexual harassment goes undetected. The project uses laboratory and field methods to investigate the relationship between images people possess about targets of sexual harassment and their images of womanhood. The studies consider whether images of sexual harassment targets overlap with images of traditional womanhood, and whether sexual harassment is more readily perceived by observers and potential targets the more closely women fit with the image of traditional womanhood. A final set of experiments explores whether broadening the image of the types of women who experience sexual harassment increases perceptions of sexual harassment targeting those who do not fit the traditional womanhood image. Participants in the studies include college students, non-student adults, and legal gatekeepers. Traditional womanhood is operationalized along personality dimensions that vary within women and using broader group identities (e.g., race, sexual orientation) that overlap to varying degrees with the traditional image of womanhood. The research will identify a potential barrier that prevents perceptions of sexual harassment, and will suggest low-cost solutions that can remove this barrier. This project will be helpful to scholars and practitioners who address civil rights law, as well as to organizations seeking to address sexual harassment. Evidence concerning best practices will be important in the development of more effective approaches to sexual harassment, ultimately improving workforce diversity and mitigating the deleterious effects of sexual harassment on its targets.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.