Having Responsible Power Leads to Sexual Harassment? The Explanatory Role of Moral Licensing
dc.contributor.advisor | Stockdale, Margaret S. | |
dc.contributor.author | Dinh, Tuyen K. | |
dc.contributor.other | Ashburn-Nardo, Leslie | |
dc.contributor.other | Salyers, Michelle P. | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2020-11-05T18:38:21Z | |
dc.date.available | 2020-11-05T18:38:21Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2020-10 | |
dc.degree.date | 2020 | en_US |
dc.degree.discipline | Department of Psychology | en |
dc.degree.grantor | Indiana University | en_US |
dc.degree.level | M.S. | en_US |
dc.description | Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) | en_US |
dc.description.abstract | Feeling powerful or possessing power over someone is often shown in the sexual harassment literature as an antecedent. Indeed, power can be construed in a self-focused manner or in a responsibility-focused manner. Tost (2015) theorized that powerholders who construe their power as responsibility should then act for the benefit of others. However, a recent study by Stockdale, Gilmer, and Dinh (2019) found the opposite effect. Specifically, they found that priming responsibility-focused power increased the intention to sexually harass, speculating that priming such powers may have created a “moral license” (Miller & Effron, 2010) to engage in sexual harassment. The purpose of the present study is to extend their findings by examining the role of moral licensing. I hypothesize that participants who are in the responsibility-focused power priming condition will engage in sexual harassment proclivities through a serial mediation of communal feelings and moral licensing (moral crediting and moral credentialing). Results confirm that communal feelings and moral crediting serially mediate the relationship between responsibility-focused power and sexual harassment proclivities. The hypothesized role of moral credentialing was not supported. Findings in this study provides a potential explanation for the paradoxical findings of responsibility-focused power in Stockdale et al. (2019)’s study. This study also emphasizes the importance of understanding responsibility-focused power in sexual harassment indices and the potential the ironic effects of having such power via moral crediting. | en_US |
dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1805/24276 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://dx.doi.org/10.7912/C2/1136 | |
dc.language.iso | en_US | en_US |
dc.subject | sexual harassment | en_US |
dc.subject | power | en_US |
dc.subject | moral licensing | en_US |
dc.subject | responsible power | en_US |
dc.title | Having Responsible Power Leads to Sexual Harassment? The Explanatory Role of Moral Licensing | en_US |
dc.type | Thesis | en |