Williams, C.W., Brown, R.S., Lees-Haley, P. R., & Price, J. R. (1995). An attributional (causal
dimensional) analysis of perceptions of sexual harassment. Journal of applied social
psychology, 25(13), 1169-1183.
 Sexual harassment is interdisciplinary: law, sociology, organizational psychology, social
psychology, communication
 Factors – conditions associated with vulnerability to unwanted sexual attention, physical
contact, coercion, intimidation
 What are variables affecting likelihood of reporting perps to authorities
 Interpretation of harassment varies by individual/genders
 Do men underutilize grievance procedures – why?
 Men have more power in orgs; male definitions of offensive conduct are likely to
dominate
 Controllable (intentional vs. accidental); stable (recurring vs. single incident: locus of
cause (internal vs. external)
 Attribution theory – Weiner
 Inds are motivated to understand the causes of events; want to comprehend,
predict,control environment
 Following negative or unexpected situations, people want to know the cause
 Three factors to Weiner’s theory
 Study: differences in how people categorize cause of social-sexual behavior and
differences in reactions; gender differences in causal categorization and affective
reactions as severity of behavior increases; consequences of categorizations and
emotional reactions
 In this study man was initiator/woman target