Gender biases in attributions of blame for workplace mistreatment: a video experiment on the effect of perpetrator and target gender

Frontiers in Psychology

Psychology

Eva Zedlacher¹  Takuya Yanagida² 

[1] Department of Business and Management, Webster Vienna Private University, Vienna, Austria;Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria;

关键词: workplace mistreatment;    gender bias;    attributions of blame;    social role theory;    perpetrator intent;    victim-blaming;    video experiments;    moral anger;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1161735

 received in 2023-02-08, accepted in 2023-05-24,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

IntroductionAmbiguous psychological workplace mistreatment such as insulting or ignoring a co-worker might trigger gender bias. This study aims to examine whether female perpetrators receive more moral anger and blame from observers than men.MethodsA sample of Austrian workforce members (n = 880, 55.00% women, 44.89% men, 0.11% diverse) responded to standardized videos showing a perpetrator’s angry insult and a perpetrator’s exclusion of a co-worker from lunch. In total, we edited 32 video clips with four female and four male professional actors. We manipulated the following variables: 2 perpetrator gender (male/female) * 2 target gender (male/female) * 2 types of mistreatment (insult/exclusion).ResultsAs hypothesized, linear mixed-effects modeling revealed more moral anger and attributions of intent against female perpetrators than against men. Significant three-way interactions showed that female perpetrators were judged more harshly than men when the target was female and the mistreatment was exclusion. Female targets were blamed less when the perpetrator was female rather than male. Male targets did not evoke attributional biases. Observer gender had no significant interaction with perpetrator or target gender.DiscussionOur findings suggest that gender biases in perpetrator-blaming are dependent on target gender and type of mistreatment. The stereotype of women having it out for other women or being “too sensitive” when mistreated by men requires more attention in organizational anti-bias trainings.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Zedlacher and Yanagida.