Search

This research examined how people judge hostile work environments in which members of a work setting derogate other workers because they are older and presumed to be incompetent based on a psycholegal model incorporating negative affect and dehumanization (Wiener, Gervais, Brnjic, & Nuss, 2014). Specifically, we conducted a study in which a national sample of community participants read a scenario in which an interviewer did or did not derogate an older worker in a work interview. Respondents predicted affect (negative and positive), rated dehumanization (animalistic and mechanistic), and assessed hostile work environment (legal and impact). Consistent with hypotheses, derogation of the older worker caused more negative affect, more animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization, and more hostile work environment perceptions. Further, consistent with the mechanisms posited by our psycholegal model, path analysis revealed that negative affect and mechanistic dehumanization explained the relation between age derogation and hostile work environment judgments. The paper ends with a discussion of implications for organizations, law, and psychology, as well as directions for future research.

Social Analytic Jurisprudence instructs researchers to study the reciprocal relations between law and peoples’ lives by developing empirical descriptions of legal assumptions about human behavior. The present work introduced a new experimental paradigm to test some of those assumptions by studying the impact of sexual objectification in a simulated job interview on performance, sexual harassment judgments, and emotions for women who experienced (akin to complainants), observed (akin to coworkers or witnesses), or predicted (akin to investigators, EEOC officers, mediators, jurors, or judges,) the impact of sexual objectification. Consistent with hypotheses, sexual objectification resulted in worse performance predictions, more sexual harassment, and more negative emotion compared with the control condition, but these effects were moderated by perspective. Overall, predictors estimated worse performance, more sexual harassment, and more negative emotion in response to sexual objectification than observers and experiencers. Anticipated negative emotion and self-referencing explained the effects for predictors. Theoretical and practical implications for legal and psychological theory on sexual harassment, objectification, and affective forecasting are discussed.

Previous research has examined the impact of the law on decisions made about social sexual interactions in the workplace in the context of a variety of individual difference variables including gender of the observer and sexist attitudes, as well as situational factors including legal standard and prior exposure to aggressive and submissive complainants. The current study continued this line of inquiry by testing whether hostile or benevolent sexist attitudes behaved differently under manipulated exposure to aggressive and submissive complainants. Full-time workers watched 1 videotape in which aggressive, submissive, or neutral (i.e., businesslike) women complained that male coworkers sexually harassed them; then, participants viewed a second complainant who always acted in a neutral behavioral tone. In the first case, participants high in hostile sexism who took a reasonable person perspective (but not those with a reasonable woman point of view) and all men who viewed an aggressive complainant found less evidence of harassment. With the second set of allegations, female workers who were exposed to a submissive complainant in the first case found less evidence of harassment against the neutral complainant, suggesting that exposure to a submissive complainant triggered some type of victim blaming in female workers. Policy and training implications are discussed.

Saint Louis UniversityThis article analyzes whether state-approved jury instructions adequately guide jurydiscretion in the penalty phase of first-degree murder trials. It examines EighthAmendment jurisprudence regarding guided jury discretion, emphasizing the use of“empirical factors” to examine the quality of state-approved instructions. Psycho-logical research and testimony on the topic of the comprehensibility of juryinstructions are reviewed. Data from a recently completed simulation with 80deliberating juries showed that current instructions do not adequately convey theconcepts and processes essential to guiding penalty phase judgments. An additionalsimulation with 20 deliberating juries demonstrated that deliberation alone does notcorrect for jurors’ errors in comprehension. The article concludes with recommen-dations for policy and future research.

The study of sexual harassment is an active and exciting arena for both legal scholars and psychologists and other social scientists. Legal rulings affect the course of psychological research, and research findings in turn inform legal scholars and the courts. This special theme issue brings togethe