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MarchApril2013

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Sexual Harassment Does Twice the Harm MAIWOLF/G LOW I MAG ES A FORTHCOMING STUDY ���nds that many people who are sexually harassed at work will be doubly victimized. First, the individuals must suffer the advances of the perpetrator. Second, if the individuals are ���passive victims��� who don���t immediately confront or report their harassers, they also must suffer the negative reactions of co-workers who believe they didn���t do enough to stop the behavior���or worse, that they invited it. Kristina The study was authored by KrisDiekmann tina Diekmann of the University of Utah���s David Eccles School of Business in Salt Lake City; Sheli SillitoWalker of Brigham Young University���s Marriott School of Management in Provo, Utah; Adam Galinsky of Columbia Business School in New York City; and Ann Tenbrunsel of Sheli the University of Notre Dame���s MenSillito-Walker doza College of Business in Indiana. Co-workers are most likely to turn on ���passive victims,��� say the researchers. These negative attitudes can reach the point that a victim���s co-workers no longer want to recommend her work or work with her on projects. The researchers point to Anita Hill, who in 1991 alleged that Adam Galinsky Clarence Thomas, then a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, had repeatedly harassed her when he was her supervisor at the Department of Education. As a result of her testimony, Hill found herself the target of condemnation and suspicion because she had not stepped forward sooner. The researchers conducted ���ve Ann Tenbrunsel experiments. In the ���rst two, they found that most people believed they themselves would confront harassers quickly; for that reason, they would judge harshly anyone who didn���t do the same. The problem is that their predictions were often wrong, says Diekmann. ���While most people predict they would take immediate action against a harasser,��� she says, ���most victims of sexual harassment don���t take any action.��� In a third experiment, the researchers identi���ed participants��� failure to consider what factors���such as a fear of job loss���could motivate a victim to remain silent. In the remaining two experiments, they made participants aware of these factors by asking them to recall a time when they themselves felt too intimidated to act in their own defense. The authors recommend that companies not only take steps to reduce incidences of sexual harassment, but also create a more supportive environment by developing training programs that help employees better understand the motivations of the passive victim. ���Double-victimization in the Workplace: Why Observers Condemn Passive Victims of Sexual Harassment��� is forthcoming in Organizational Science. BizEd March/April 2013 59

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