Women Overestimate Their Willingness to Confront Harassment

August 05, 2013 HBR's Daily Stat In experiment, 83% of women said they would confront a job interviewer who asked such sexually harassing questions as "Do you have a boyfriend?" And the more confrontation they predicted for themselves, the greater their contempt for women who didn't protest. Yet past research shows thatmost candidates who face such harassment do nothing to protest, says a team led by Kristina A. Diekmann of the University of Utah. People underestimate the costs of confrontation, such as impaired reputation and social status, if they don't experience the harassment themselves. SOURCE: Double Victimization in the Workplace: Why Observers Condemn Passive Victims of Sexual Harassment