Predictors of attitudes toward sexual harrassment: Ambivalent sexism, ambivalence toward men,and gender differences

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi, Psikoloji Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2007

Öğrenci: SİNEM TURGUT

Danışman: NURAY SAKALLI UĞURLU

Özet:

This thesis investigated attitudes toward sexual harassment (SH) and relationship between these attitudes, ambivalent sexism and ambivalence toward men. 311 Middle East Technical University students with a mean age of 22 participated in this study. Attitudes toward SH was measured by Sexual Harassment Attitude Scale (SHAS), which has three subfactors; accepting SH as a result of provocative behaviors of women, accepting SH as normal flirtations between men and women, and endorsement of SH as a trivial matter, respectively. Ambivalent sexism was measured by Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI) and ambivalence toward men was measured by Ambivalence toward Men Inventory (AMI). Sequential regression analysis revealed that gender, Hostile Sexism (HS) and Benevolence toward Men (BM) predicted acceptance of SH as provocative behaviors of women. Additional analysis demonstrated that gender, BM, Benevolent Sexism (BS) and age predicted acceptance of SH as normal flirtations. Finally, BS, gender, economy class and department were significantly predicting endorsement of SH as a social problem. Main contributions of this thesis were investigating (1) attitudes toward sexual harassment and its relationship with ambivalent sexist attitudes toward not only to women but also to men and (2) effects of gender, and some other demographic variables such as age, department and economy class on predicting attitudes toward SH.