Broad concepts of sexism predict polarized moral judgments of victims and perpetrators

Abstract

Research on concept creep suggests that the expansiveness of people's concepts of harm has implications for their moral judgments. The present study assessed the breadth of 201 American participants' concepts of sexual harassment and gender discrimination, examined predictors of the breadth of these concepts, and tested relationships between concept breadth and moral judgments of a female victim and male perpetrators in a workplace sexism scenario. The breadth of participants' sexism-related concepts was most strongly predicted by their endorsement of harm-based morality and was the strongest predictor of the perceived moral deservingness of the victim and moral responsibility of the perpetrators.

Introduction

The #MeToo movement has brought a new urgency to understanding and responding to sexual harassment and gender discrimination. Women's experiences of sexism are disturbingly prevalent and have adverse psychological, physical, social, and economic effects. In workplaces, research has established that harassment and discrimination impair women's job performance, professional relationships, career advancement, and motivation (e.g., McDonald, 2012). However, responding to sexist behavior is often challenging because it may be ambiguous and open to alternative interpretations. People differ in where they draw the line between inappropriate and innocuous behavior. One person's harassment may be another's playful banter.

Our research examined whether individual differences in concepts of sexism are associated with moral judgments of potentially sexist behavior. It builds on accounts of ‘concept creep’ (Haslam, 2016), which argue that concepts associated with harm (e.g., bullying, prejudice, trauma) increasingly refer to a wider range of phenomena than they did in earlier decades. In theory, this semantic expansion reflects a rising societal sensitivity to harm and leads to polarized moral judgments. Recipients of harm are judged to be deserving and victimized ‘moral patients’—people who have moral status as recipients of immoral acts—and perpetrators to be blameworthy ‘moral agents’ (Gray & Wegner, 2009).

Individual differences in the expansiveness of sexism-related concepts have not previously been examined as predictors of judgments of sexist behavior, but recent research indicates that holding broad definitions of other harm-related concepts is associated with endorsing harm-based morality (McGrath, Randall-Dzerdz, Wheeler, Murphy, & Haslam, 2019) and parents holding broad concepts of bullying make more bullying complaints (Schroeder, Morris, & Flack, 2017).

Aligned with this earlier work, the present study examined how broad concepts of sexism (sexual harassment and gender discrimination) predict judgments of people involved in potentially sexist behavior in hypothetical workplace settings. We developed reliable measures of concept breadth and used them to test two hypotheses: people with broad concepts of sexism would 1) endorse harm-based morality, and 2) be more likely to judge a woman in a possibly sexist work scenario as a moral patient and her male co-workers as moral agents.