Workplace Sexual Harassment of Non-Prototypical Women: Cognitive Processes and Legal Outcomes

Abstract

Sexual harassment is widespread in the workplace, yet people do not equally perceive all women as victims. Grounded in intersectionality theory and prototype models of social perception, this dissertation explores whether people are less likely to see women who deviate from the dominant cultural prototype (White, young, straight, feminine) as legitimate when claiming sexual harassment and advances research on sexual harassment by (a) examining new forms of intersectional prototypicality, (b) testing the boundaries of prototype bias in legal professionals using realistic case materials, and (c) evaluating an intervention to reduce reliance on biased prototypes in victim judgments. Chapter 1 uses MouseTracker to test whether participants are less likely to categorize Black (vs. White), lesbian (vs. straight), and middle-aged (vs. young-adult) women as harassment victims. Chapter 2 tests this bias in a legal context by asking civil rights attorneys to evaluate cases involving prototypical and nonprototypical women. Chapter 3 introduces an educational intervention that aims to reduce prototype bias in both laypeople and legal professionals.