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Hodge, James J.

Psychology

2013

MA

Past research indicates that targets ofdiscrimination typically do not confront the perpetrator, and that their reluctance to confront may stem from the social costs incurred from indicating that they have experienced discrimination. The current study explored whether social costs may also influence the willingness of third party observers to report and negatively evaluate the perpetrator of a discriminatory event, and whether people correctly anticipate how social costs may affect their willingness to intervene. Undergraduate participants were asked to evaluate the performance of a sexist male applicant during a hypothetical or ostensibly real job interview. Social cost was manipulated by whether the evaluations were identifiable (high cost) or anonymous (low cost).
Participants also had the opportunity to report the applicant in both conditions. Results indicated that social cost and harassment context did not influence third party responses to sexism. However, participants higher in liberal-feminist beliefs were less likely to say they would hire the sexist applicant, rated his interview performance worse, and were more likely to explicitly report his sexist behavior. In contrast, participants higher in system-justifying beliefs were more likely to say they would hire the applicant, rated his interview performance better, and were less likely to explicitly report his sexist behavior. This study suggests that targets and observers of sexism might not be equally influenced by social cost and highlights other variables that might be important when predicting third party responses to sexism.