Date of Award
2011
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Psychology
Abstract
Women believe that they would confront perpetrators of sexual harassment, but when put in a sexually harassing situation they rarely confront (Woodzicka & LaFrance, 2001). Women may overestimate their likelihood of confronting because they think they would be concerned with fairness, but in actuality the need to belong strongly dissuades women from confronting harassers. I tested this idea by randomly assigning women to be primed with a belonging, fairness, or no goal, and then had them predict how they would respond to sexually harassing or surprising interview questions. Women who viewed the sexually harassing interview questions predicted more confrontational behavior and negative emotions than women who viewed surprising interview questions. I found partial support for the impact of goals; women who were primed with a belonging goal were less likely to predict several confrontational behaviors and predicted more fear than women primed with a fairness goal or no goal.
Recommended Citation
Melchiori, Kala Jean, "The Ends Determine the Means: Activated Goals Explain the Decision to Confront" (2011). Master's Theses. 543.
https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses/543
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2011 Kala Jean Melchiori
