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Sexual harassment proclivities in men

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Abstract

Three studies were conducted to develop and validate a measure of sexual harassment proclivities in males. Previous studies of sexual harassment were reviewed and a gap in the current knowledge of the psychological characteristics of sexual harassers was revealed. A possible technique for studying sexual harassment proclivities was suggested by recent research on rape proclivities. Two initial studies using this technique found (1) that the likelihood of sexually harassing can be reliably measured and 2) that this measure correlated with related attitude and belief measures. The third study demonstrated that the likelihood of sexual harassment measure can predict sexual behaviors in a laboratory setting.

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The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the following people in conducting this research: Mark Chalabala, Mark Colon, Kathy Epkins, Lisa Fix, Dawn Henricksen, Jackie Hind, Carla McPhee, Pat Norman, Rene Reeves, Judona Samuel, and Kevin Spahn. Also, gratitude is expressed to Mark McDaniel for his contributions to the methodology in Study 3 and to Hannah Eisner for her comments on a previous draft of this paper. This research was supported in part by a grant from the office of Research, Services and Grants, Illinois State University.

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Pryor, J.B. Sexual harassment proclivities in men. Sex Roles 17, 269–290 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00288453

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