Flirting and Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: An Exploratory Study.

A study identified the verbal and nonverbal behaviors that people associate with flirting as opposed to sexual harassment, determined whether people could successfully distinguish between flirting and sexual harassment, and examined the relationship between variables that might affect the first two objectives. Subjects, 57 females and 32 males from undergraduate courses at a mid-south university, participated as part of a course research requirement. Each participant completed measures of listening style, empathy, and situational ethics. Students then viewed one of eight brief videotape segments and were asked if flirting or sexual harassment occurred, and who started the flirting. Results indicated that: (1) 40.74% of the participants perceived sexual harassment in the flirting scenarios; (2) 78.89% of the participants believed flirting occurred in the sexual harassment scene which displayed no outwardly friendly flirting behavior; (3) only empathy subscales were significantly correlated with the perceptions of flirting and sexual harassment; (4) in the flirting condition with the female as superior, participants with a preference for action and content listening styles were not likely to identify verbal flirting or verbal sexual harassment; and (5) in the flirting condition with the male as superior, participants with a preference for the people listening style tended to identify verbal flirting. Findings demonstrate the confusion that exists in distinguishing flirting from sexually harassing behavior. (Contains 99 references, 3 notes, 1 figure, and 8 tables of data. An appendix lists verbal utterances and nonverbal communication behaviors in each of the conditions.) (RS) *********************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * *********************************************************************** Flirting and Sexual Harassment Flirting and Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: An Exploratory Study Joann Keyton, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Theatre and Communication Arts Memphis State University Memphis, TN 38152 and Steve Rhodes, Ph.D. Professor Department of Communication Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, MI 49008 U.S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATOR OnK e of Educationat Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 1AFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) yi,t his document has been reproduced 15 received from the person or organization originating iI (I Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality Points of view or opinionSSIaleclin ihisdocu menu do not necessarily represent official OF RI position or policy -PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY a, \C__C4-br) TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC1" The authors thank Amy Brown and Jeff Solomon for their help with data collection. BEST COPY AVAILABLE 2 Flirting and Sexual Harassment 1 Researchers have typically had difficulty accounting for people's perceptions and interpretations when it comes to defining sexual harassment in the workplace (Booth-Butterfield, 1983; 1985; 1986; 1987; Coles, 1986; Collins & Blodgett, 1981; Gutek, Morasch, & Cohen, 1983; Gutek & Nakamura, 1983; Padgitt & Padgitt, 1986; Reilly, Lott, & Gollogly, 1986; Ellis, Rhodes, & Ford, 1992). The lack of a clear idea of what people do and do not perceive as sexual harassment is one difficulty limiting research on the topic and the application of research findings to the practical (applied) problem of dealing with sexual harassment in organizations (York, 1989). Empirical determination of the behaviors and variables that constitute sexual harassment and affect perceptions of what constitutes sexual harassment would enable employers to write more effective policy statements, develop programs for helping employees recognize when sometning they say or do might be construed as sexual harassment, learn how to communicate appropriately with members of the opposite sex so that innocent behaviors cannot be misconstrued as sexual harassment, and learn how to respond appropriately when confronted with sexual harassment. To prevent incidence of sexual harassment, many organizations have taken numerous steps to inform their employees about the nature of sexual harass'ment and its consequences. These policies provide some legal relief for the organization if the procedures are followed in a sexual harassment complaint, but they do little to help sort through the social-sexual behaviors that constitute nonharassing sexual behavior, or flirting, from those that constitute harassing sexual behavior. Statement of the Problem The present study started as an extension of work conducted by Ellis et al. (1992) and a study conducted by Keyton (1992). The Ellis et al. study was concerned with identifying whether ethical ideology, along with other selected variables, might affect the extent to which people perceive certain behm ors as sexually harassing. The Keyton study tested flirting behaviors and interpretations of those behaviors in two ckAtextssocial and work. An unexpected finding of the Ellis et al. study was that behaviors the researcners thought were c;early sexually harassing, the subjects had difficulty identifying as sexually harassing. Part of their difficulty seemed to be related to drawing a distinction between sexual harassment and flirting.