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Krulewitz, Julianne

Psychology

2004

M.A.

The goal of this study was to see how knowing that a woman has been sexually harassed affects the way people evaluate her. Male and female participants (n=205). evaluated women who had been sexually harassed or not harassed during a job interview conducted as part of a prior study (Woodzicka, 2000). In that study, participants who were naive about whether the women had been harassed rated harassed women as performing more poorly during the interview than nonharassed women, suggesting that harassment has detrimental effects on women's interview performance. The present study replicated Woodzicka's (2000) finding. Participants rated women who had been harassed during job interviews more negatively than women who had not been harassed when they were unaware that harassment had occurred. These naive participants' ratings were compared with those of participants who were aware that the job applicant had been harassed.
Knowledge of the harassment had little effect on the ratings of the harassed applicants. Only participants who had high Just World Beliefs and those who had a high amount of personal experience with sexual harassment (as measured by the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire) used this information in their rating process. Information about harassment did however negatively affect the perceptions of the interviewer. The findings of this study suggest that people ignore the detrimental effects that harassment has on women when they evaluate the performance of harassed women. Some people are affected by knowing that a woman was harassed, but for those high in belief in a just world information about harassment leads to victim blaming. The implications of participant's willingness to ignore the impact of sexual harassment in making generalizations about the job applicant's abilities are discussed.