Bystanders' thresholds for intervention in Black vs. White women's sexual harassment

Black women's sexual harassment is often overlooked and dismissed relative to White women's harassment. In three pre-registered experiments, we test whether this neglect extends to bystander intervention in sexual harassment. Participants observed an ostensibly live job interview between a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2024-02, Vol.19 (2), p.e0296755-e0296755
Main Authors: Schachtman, Rebecca, Kaiser, Cheryl R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Black People
Demographic aspects
Female
Humans
Male
Psychological aspects
Sexual Harassment
Social aspects
White People
White women
Women, Black
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Summary:Black women's sexual harassment is often overlooked and dismissed relative to White women's harassment. In three pre-registered experiments, we test whether this neglect extends to bystander intervention in sexual harassment. Participants observed an ostensibly live job interview between a man manager and a Black or White woman job candidate. The manager's questions were pre-programmed to grow increasingly harassing, and participants were asked to intervene if/when they found the interview inappropriate. A meta-analysis of the three studies (N = 1487), revealed that bystanders did not differ in their threshold for intervention when sexual harassment targeted the Black vs. White woman. Despite evidence for the relative neglect of Black women in responses to sexual harassment, these data suggest that bystanders may respond similarly for Black and White women.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0296755