Charlotte Diehl

Face the consequences: Learning about victim's suffering reduces sexual harassment myth acceptance and men's likelihood to sexually harass

Prior research has shown that (1) better knowledge about the consequences of rape goes along with less rape-supportive attitudes and lower rape proclivity, and (2) empathy with the victims correlates negatively with sexual aggression. In two experiments, the authors combined these approaches in order to reduce sexual harassment myth acceptance (SHMA) and the likelihood to sexually harass (LSH). In Study 1, 101 male and female university students read a report describing sexual harassment as either serious or harmless, and completed scales assessing dispositional empathy and SHMA. Results showed that higher empathy was associated with lower SHMA; furthermore, learning about the seriousness (vs. harmlessness) of sexual harassment led to lower SHMA, particularly in participants low in empathy. Gender differences in SHMA were fully explained by gender differences in empathy. In Study 2, perspective taking, a crucial aspect of empathy, was manipulated. One hundred nineteen male and female participants read either a neutral text or a description of a sexual harassment case, which was written either from the female targets or from the male perpetrators perspective; then they completed scales measuring SHMA and (only male participants) LSH. The targets perspective led to lower SHMA and to lower LSH than did the neutral text, whereas no such effect was found for the perpetrators perspective. Implications for intervention programs are discussed.

Predicting Sexual Harassment From Hostile Sexism and Short-Term Mating Orientation: Relative Strength of Predictors Depends on Situational Priming of Power Versus Sex:

Previous research has shown that short-term mating orientation (STMO) and hostile sexism (HS) selectively predict different types of sexual harassment. In a priming experiment, we studied the situational malleability of those effects. Male participants could repeatedly send sexist jokes (gender harassment), harassing remarks (unwanted sexual attention), or nonharassing messages to a (computer-simulated) female target. Before entering the laboratory, participants were unobtrusively primed with the concepts of either sexuality or power. As hypothesized, sexuality priming strengthened the link between STMO and unwanted sexual attention, whereas power priming strengthened the link between HS and gender harassment. Practical implications are discussed.

Get One or Create One: the Impact of Graded Involvement in a Selection Procedure for a Virtual Agent on Satisfaction and Suitability Ratings

N = 86 participants were either confronted with a predefined virtual agent, or could select a virtual agent from predefined sets of six or 30 graphical models, or had the opportunity to self-customize the agent’s appearance more freely. We investigated the effect of graded user involvement in the selection procedure on their ratings of satisfaction with the agent and perceived task suitability. In a second step, we explored the psychological mechanism underlying this effect. Statistical analyses revealed that satisfaction with the chosen virtual agent increased with the degree of participants’ involvement in terms of more choice, but not in terms of self-customization. Furthermore, we show that this effect was driven by the perceived likeability, attractiveness, and competence of the agent. We discuss implications of our results for the development of a virtual agent serving as a virtual assistant in a smart home environment.