Women's Cognitive, Affective, and Physiological Reactions to a Male Coworker's Sexist Behavior¹

Abstract

Empirical research has documented the attitudinal and behavioral consequences of sexual harassment, but has not examined the physiological consequences. In the present study, we monitored women's autonomic physiological activity while they performed a wordassociation task with a male confederate who was either harassing, egalitarian, or submissive. Subsequently, we examined the women's cognitive, affective, and physiological reactions as they prepared and delivered a speech to the same confederate. Results indicate that harassment led to greater cardiovascular reactivity during the word-association task and to greater cognitive, negative affective, and cardiovascular reactions during the subsequent speech compared with other conditions. Subgroups of harassed women who confronted their coworker, or who blamed themselves for his behavior, also exhibited greater cardiovascular reactivity during both tasks compared to women who did not use these coping responses. We integrate our laboratoly results with those obtained in field settings.

The Emotional Impact of Ambivalent Sexism: Forecasts Versus Real Experiences

“…Research suggests that women who are exposed to sexism display heightened feelings of anger, disgust (e.g., LaFrance and Woodzicka 1998; Vescio et al 2005), and sadness (Schneider et al 2001). Moreover, targets of prejudice often experience self-consciousness (e.g., Frable et al 1990;Pinel 1999), particularly when attention is drawn to their stigmatized status (Cioffi 2000;Saenz 1994), as it is during sexist incidents.…”

Bystander Sexism in the Intergroup Context: The Impact of Cat-calls on Women’s Reactions Towards Men

“…Several decades of research demonstrates that sexism is a frequent occurrence in American women's personal and professional lives and can be detrimental to their psychological well-being, health, and job satisfaction (e.g., Crocker et al 1991;Fitzgerald 1993;Fitzgerald et al 1997;Major et al 2003;Schneider et al 1997Schneider et al , 2001Swim et al 1998;Swim and Hyers 1999;Swim et al 2001; see Lee et al 2007 for a discussion of cross-cultural incidence and origin of sexism). While a great deal of research has focused on understanding these intraindividual outcomes, very little work has examined the possibility that sexism may also have ramifications for how women view the outgroup of men, more generally (for an exception, see Pennekamp et al 2007).…”

Sexual Harassment: Undermining the Wellbeing of Working Women

“…Disordered eating is another negative outcome of workplace sexual harassment (Buchanan et al 2013 ;Harned 2000 ;Harned and Fitzgerald 2002 ). An experimental study induced mild harassment experiences and found a causal relationship between experiencing sexual harassment and increased cardiovascular reactivity (Schneider et al 2001 ).…”