Rater personality and judgments of sexual harassment

Abstract

The current study examined the relationship between Big Five personality characteristics and third-party judgments of sexual harassment. Two hundred forty two female undergraduates were asked to assume the role of a juror in an actual sexual harassment court case. Participants were presented with a scenario based on an actual hostile work environment sexual harassment (HWE SH) court case and asked to render a verdict based on the EEOC definition of HWE SH. Relationships between the Big Five factors and facets of extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism as assessed by the NEO-PI and sexual harassment verdicts were explored. Results indicate that the agreeableness facet of altruism is related to sexual harassment verdicts. Exploratory results suggest that neuroticism and the agreeableness facet of compliance are related to the degree of confidence in the verdicts. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.