Personality, social norms, and sexual harassment in the workplace

To investigate the association between personality traits, perceived social norms, and sexual harassment in the workplace, 199 white-collar workers answered an online questionnaire (96 men, 103 women). Based on logistic regression analysis, we investigated the associations between sexual harassment behaviors in the workplace, perceived social norms, and the personality traits extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. Results suggest that lower levels of openness are associated with higher levels of sexual harassment behaviors for both men and women. Furthermore, for both men and women, the association between openness and sexual harassment behaviors is greater if one perceives higher acceptance of sexual harassment by their peers. For men, sexual harassment behaviors are also associated with age, sexual harassment myth acceptance, and lower levels of conscientiousness. In contrast, for women sexual harassment behaviors are associated with higher levels of extraversion and neuroticism.