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Women’s representation in social media is becoming increasingly sexualized, even when they are victims of sexual harassment (SH). In the present research, we adopted a bystander approach to investigate the role of victims’ sexualization on bystanders’ reactions to an episode of SH. In Study 1, female participants read a fictitious newspaper article that described a workplace SH episode: According to condition, the article included a picture of the victim who was wearing either sexualized or nonsexualized clothing. In Study 2, which also included male participants, we used a similar procedure and measured a series of traditional beliefs against women equality. As predicted, participants showed lower willingness to help the sexualized than nonsexualized victim: This effect occurred because they attributed lower morality to the victim and blamed her more for the SH event. Study 2 very well replicated Study 1 results and also showed that higher levels of endorsement of traditional masculine norms further enhanced biased perception of the sexualized (vs. nonsexualized) victim. Together, findings suggest that biased evaluations of workplace SH episodes associated with sexualized victims’ appearance, consistent with traditional masculine norms, may have detrimental consequences by increasing legitimization and tolerance toward SH.

This paper examines the influence of female sexualization on people's willingness to provide help in cases of intimate partner violence (IPV). We examined how sexualization may make women seem lacking moral patiency and moral virtue both of which may lead to a reduced willingness to help. In the first study, participants read a fictitious newspaper article describing an IPV incident. They were then presented with a picture of the ostensible victim depicting the woman with either a sexualized or non-sexualized appearance. Participants judged both the victim's moral patiency and morality, and then expressed their willingness to provide help to that victim. Although the sexualized victim was viewed as a lesser moral patient (Studies 1 and 2) and as less moral (Study 2), it was seeing the victim as unworthy of moral patiency rather than lacking moral virtue (immoral) that linked sexualization to reduced help. Controlling for participants' sexism and women's admission of infidelity, Study 2 replicated that sexualization reduced helping intentions through a lack of moral patiency. Practical implications are discussed. Language: en