Do they see what he experiences? Objectification and sexual harassment

Two studies tested the hypothesis that men who are sexually objectified during an interview will experience a negative emotion, rate the experience as harassing, and perform badly on tasks compared to un‐objectified controls. However, observers who watch videos of objectified experiencers and predic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAnalyses of social issues and public policy Vol. 23; no. 2; pp. 418 - 452
Main Authors Wiener, Richard L., Vardsveen, Trace C., Petty, Taylor
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Malden Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.08.2023
Subjects
Between-subjects design
College students
Effects
Emotions
Employment interviews
Experience
Interviews
Men
Objectification
Sexual harassment
Sexualization
Task performance
Testimony
Women
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Summary:Two studies tested the hypothesis that men who are sexually objectified during an interview will experience a negative emotion, rate the experience as harassing, and perform badly on tasks compared to un‐objectified controls. However, observers who watch videos of objectified experiencers and predictors who read about the interaction will demonstrate stronger effects, with women showing the strongest. In Study 1, 90 undergraduates (60 men) were interviewees or watched a video of a mock job interview in a 2 (objectification: objectifying interview vs. non‐objectifying interview) × 3 (perspective: experiencer who was a man vs. observers, some men and some women) mixed model design with repeated measures on the second factor. In Study 2, 71 undergraduates read about a job interview in a 2 (objectification: objectifying vs. non‐objectifying interview) × 2 (gender: man vs. woman) between‐subjects design. Results showed that while objectified experiencers (men) showed no objectification effects, observers and predictors anticipated a reasonable person would experience more harassment than the experiencers reported, with observers’ enjoyment of sexualization moderating these forecasts. Additionally, the predictors’ forecasted negative emotions mediated the effects of objectification on judgments and task performance. These studies argue for informing Title VII's 2‐prong subjective‐objective test with social fact testimony in same‐sex harassment cases.
Bibliography:Petty, T. E., Wiener, R. L., & Vardsveen, T. C. (2019, March).
Objectifying men: Do they see what you see?
Sex harassment research in the era of #MeToo
Different components of these data were previously presented as the following
Wiener, R. L., Vardsveen, T. C., & Petty, T. E. (2019, June). Objectifying men: Do they see what women see? In B. Amber & M. Stockdale (Chairs)
[Paper presentation]. The American Psychology‐Law Society, Portland, OR.
For all the experiments reported in this paper, we reported all measures in the paper or on the OSF website as our footnotes specify. We have reported all conditions, data exclusions, and sample size determinations in the paper itself.
[Symposium]. The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, San Diego, CA.
ISSN:1529-7489
1530-2415
DOI:10.1111/asap.12354