An extensive body of literature has documented the widespread and damaging nature of sexual harassment among Anglo women, but little attention has focused on the experiences of women of color. The current paper begins to address this gap by comparing sexual harassment incidence rates and psychological and work-related outcomes of Hispanic and non-Hispanic White women across varying levels of cultural affiliation. Chi-square tests of association suggest that risk of harassment increases with affiliation to the mainstream U.S. culture, and hierarchical regression analyses suggest that cultural affiliation moderates the relation between sexual harassment and occupational functioning. These provocative findings are discussed in the context of social and economic vulnerability, socio-sexual norms, and cultural background.

Recently, some defense-oriented authorities have proposed that a history of childhood sexual abuse can be used to attack virtually every aspect of a sexual harassment claimant's case, including the issues of unwelcomeness, reasonableness, damages, and even credibility. The authors critiqued these claims, arguing that they are not only grounded in faulty logic and fallacious reasoning but furthermore ignore or distort the large body of data that contradict them. Using evidence from 2 empirical studies, they argued that there is no scientific evidence for the claims of the "abuse defense" and provided a discussion of the dangers it poses to the integrity of the scientific contribution to judicial decision making. They concluded by briefly describing an alternative to the traditional method of damages determination that circumvents some of its most regressive aspects.It is by now generally accepted that sexual harassment is a serious problem for individuals and organizations alike. Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 first provided for compensatory and punitive damages at the federal level, the stakes for both sides have become higher and legal claims ever more vigorously contested. Defendants typically raise a number of substantive defenses to liability, including that the alleged events never occurred or, if they did, were trivial or not unwelcome to the complainant or that respondent organization took prompt remedial action. Even when the organization is found to be liable, defendants seek to avoid substantial judgments by arguing that they were mainly joking or engaging in "horseplay" and that the plaintiff could not have been significantly damaged.

Individuals experiencing pain rely on impulse to make decisions, including choices regarding food consumption (Darbor, Lench, & Carter-Sowell, 2016). This study examined whether older adults experiencing chronic pain report higher instances of emotional eating in comparison to a population of older adults not experiencing chronic pain. Data stemmed from the Midlife in the United States study was analyzed to investigate whether individuals used food as a coping mechanism for chronic pain symptoms (Ryff et al., 2017). The sample consisted of Americans aged 60 to 74 years of age. Pain conditions included: has chronic pain (n=686) and does not have chronic pain (n=1036). Results of the Independent Samples T-Test indicated that participants were found to be engaging in emotional eating when experiencing chronic pain symptoms, as hypothesized. Participants in the has chronic pain condition reported relying on food as a coping mechanism more (M= 3.66, SD= 1.87) than participants in the does not have chronic pain condition (M= 3.42, SD= 1.71); t(1370)= 2.71, p= .007, d= 0.13. Results suggest that older adults experiencing chronic pain report utilizing food as a coping mechanism more than older adults that do not experience chronic pain. These findings have health implications given the rising obesity rates associated with persistent pain. Future directions may include studies on the negative health outcomes that result from high instances of emotional eating in older adults experiencing chronic pain. Additionally, investigating alternative coping mechanisms for chronic pain would be beneficial to diminish the harmful health effects of emotional eating.

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