Contrapower Sexual Harassment: A Focus on Perpetrators

Scholars interested in understanding sexual harassment prevalence have largely focused on traditional sexual harassment and characteristics of harassment targets that predict the likelihood of being harassed. The current study explored harassment prevalence by focusing on contrapower sexual harassment behavior (i.e. sexual harassment where the perpetrator has less formal power than the harassment target) and the characteristics of harassment perpetrators. Two hundred and fifty-six participants (64.1% women) responded to a series of scales measuring social dominance orientation, organizational tolerance for sexual harassment, Big Five personality traits (i.e. agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, extraversion, and neuroticism), and Dark Triad personality traits (i.e. narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy). Zero-order correlational analyses indicated social dominance orientation is positively associated with both genders performing contrapower sexual harassment. Agreeableness negatively predicted harassment behavior for both genders, while psychopathy positively predicted harassment behavior. Organizational tolerance of sexual harassment positively predicted harassment behavior only for men. Exploratory analyses indicated moderate gender differences in behavior such that men harassed more frequently than women. Implications and future research directions are discussed.