Same and Opposite Sex Sexual Harassment: The Roles of Sex and Sociosexuality

A lot of sexual harassment research has focused on the most common male-on-female manifestation. Little research has considered women as perpetrators, men as victims, and same-sex incidents of harassment. It is necessary to consider both men and women as victims and perpetrators to foster targeted approaches for all manifestations. The current study examines same and opposite sex harassment, with men and women as both victims and perpetrators. Sexual harassment is further broken down and examined as undesired solicitation and derogation as opposite sex mate-seeking and competitor degradation tactics, respectively. The role of sociosexuality, which indicates an individual’s openness to short-term mating, was also examined. In a UK-based sample ( n = 421, 58% women, age 18–30, recruited via social media and via the Prolific website) with opposite-sex interests, we found sociosexual behaviour to be a consistent predictor of opposite but not same sex harassment for both sexes. For women only, hostile sexism strongly predicted all manifestations of harassment engagement and experience. For undesired solicitation, opposite sex manifestations were most common. Same sex undesired solicitation was mediated by opposite sex solicitation for both sexes’ engagement and experience, suggesting a spillover effect. For derogation, opposite sex manifestations were again most common, with no mediation effect. This implies that sexual harassment as undesired solicitation is primarily a mate-seeking tactic reflecting underlying evolved desires, but derogation may be influenced by other factors. These findings have implications for future intervention development, indicating a need to consider mate-seeking psychology and to create sex-specific methods of targeting solicitation and derogation separately.