From Misperception to Misconduct: Dominance Motivation as a Driver of Workplace Sexual Harassment

Sexual misperceptions refer to instances in which individuals wrongly infer sexual interest from other people. Traditionally, such sexual misperceptions have been studied within the dating context among student samples primarily. Our research extends this line of research and examines sexual misperceptions in the workplace. In a two-wave survey (N = 212), we show that employees with a higher dominance motivation are more likely to perceive sexual interest in the behavior of a co-worker with a different gender, regardless of one’s own gender or formal power position. In a preregistered three-wave survey (N = 349) we further show that perceptions of sexual interest are positively associated with the likelihood to sexually harass co-workers, and that perceptions of sexual interest mediate the positive relationship between dominance motivation and sexual workplace harassment. We discuss theoretical and practical contributions of our findings as well as suggestions for future research.