The Moderating Role of Social Approval Perception on the Relationship between the Intention to Sexual Harassment and Sexual Harassment towards Women in the Workplace

Subject Areas : Psychology

Monireh Sadat Hosseini ¹ , Ali Mehdad ² , Majid Saffarinia ³

1 - PhD Candidate of Psychology, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities, Saveh Branch, Islamic Azad University, Saveh, Iran
2 - Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, College of Education and Psychology, Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran.
3 - Professor of Psychology, Faculty of Education and Psychology, Payam-E-Noor University, Tehran, Iran.

Received: 2022-09-24 Accepted : 2022-11-19 Published : 2022-12-22

Keywords: Sexual harassment towards women, Social approval perception, Intention to sexual harassment, Workplace,

Abstract :

The aim of this research was investigating the moderating role of social approval perception on relationship between intention to sexual harassment and sexual harassment towards women in workplace.  The research statistical population included all bank offices, stock exchange, and insurance agencies male employee in Tehran city.  The sample consisted 273 individuals whom were selected based on convenience sampling procedure among the population. The research was applied one concerning the object and correlational descriptive with respect to method. The data collected via the implementation of Fitzgerald & et al. Sexual Harassment of Women (1995), Hosseini, Mehdad & Saffarinia Intention to Sexual Harassment (2022) and Hosseini, Mehdad & Saffarinia Social Approval Perception (2022) questionnaires. Data were analyzed by using Pearson correlation coefficient and structural equation modeling (SEM). The finding showed that there was a significant positive relationship between intention to sexual harassment with sexual harassment of women (p≤0.05). Moreover, social approval perception could significantly moderate the relationship between intention to sexual harassment and sexual harassment of women (p≤0.05). In other words, in men with low social approval perception, the intention to sexual harassment did not lead to sexual harassment of women, but in men with high social approval perception, the intention to sexual harassment led to sexual harassment of women. With considering the moderating role of social approval perception in relationship between intention to sexual harassment and sexual harassment of women, to prevent sexual harassment of women at workplace, there is a need for cooperation of the organization’ members in recognizing sexual harassment of women, intolerance with its occurrence, as well as organizational intervention policies to deal with the transformation of intention in to behavior.

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