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PROBLEM OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT.
Term Paper ID:29973
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Examines the ideas about private justice and social learning theory to provide a strategy to reduce the problem of sexual harassment.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Examines the ideas about private justice and social learning theory to provide a strategy to reduce the problem of sexual harassment. Premise is that a learned behavior, perpetuated by the powerful against the weak, can be unlearned. Concept of conditioning. Self-interest as bases of human behavior. Role of learning on deviance. Relation of concept of reward to sexual harassment. Workplace harassment & women.
Paper Introduction:
Sexual harassment is a widespread problem and one that is widely acknowledged by a number of powerful institutions (as well as the victims of the practice) and yet it remains difficult to counteract for several reasons. This paper examines how a perspective that incorporates ideas about private justice and perspectives taken from social learning theory can suggest one possible strategy to reduce the problem of sexual harassment.
The first of the two primary reasons that sexual harassment is a difficult behavior to remove from society are that it is perpetuated in general by the powerful against the weak – in this case, by men against women. While in a democracy the weak are protected by the rule of law, laws are in fact always differentially enforced, and always (as a general rule) enforced less well against the powerful. Women who seek justice against men (
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Classicalconditioning (also referred to as Pavlovian conditioning) refers tosituations in which a stimulus (i.e. Suchimitation includes imitation of deviant and criminal behaviors and suggeststhat people may learn to act in deviant ways not only by being instructedby people who have established deviant identities but simply by being intheir proximity and watching them. 6 1). The major purport of Bandura's social learning model is that not onlycan people learn to be deviant by being rewarded for deviant behavior butthey can learn to be deviant by watching other people being rewarded forperforming deviant behavior. Such deviantacts may occur because the man is in fact conforming to his own socialgroup, perhaps a subset of workers or perhaps a group defined by malerelatives. This idea that people can deviate even as they conform is in fact fareasier to accept and less paradoxical than it appears. This is possiblebecause of certain qualities of - or assumptions about - social conformity.The first of these is that people do not violate the norms of the group towhich they belong. While punishment of sexual harassment can certainly come from formallegal institutions, it can also quite easily come through the kinds of self-help mechanisms, attitudes and actions that Black suggests. Self-help or private justice can be seen simply as a modeof conflict management pursued outside a formal legal system either becauseno formal legal system exists or it does exist but is not available to theindividuals in question (Black, 1983, pp. Social learning theorists have been criticized when they have appliedtheir perspective to deviant and/or criminal behavior on the grounds thatmost people that one comes into contact with and therefore learns from arenot deviant, thus failing to provide models. The corollary of this statement is that sexual harassment can bereduced if sexual harassers are punished; harassers can learn new ways inwhich to act if sexual harassment becomes defined as deviant in a way thatis punished within the particular social sphere that the harasser and thevictim both inhabit. 42). 294). In other words, it doesnot offer an explanation that is in any way radically novel; rather, ittakes an ordinary view of the world and makes it more rigorous and sotherefore more useful for scholarly purposes. ReferencesBandura, A., Ross, D. This is the case in a family or householdwhere all members have relatively low social status, a locale that oftenbreeds sexual harassment. If people do not violate their group's normsthen, ipso facto, whatever they do is a norm of their group, which theythen are not violating. Her action plan postulated that corporations would act on two main assumptions: that the support of management was crucial to success in this endeavor, and that the workers would believe in this support only if an anti-harassment stance was incorporated into the reward structure. Part of establishing such circumstances involves ensuringthat the management of a workplace (the arena that she is focussing on) iscommitted to eliminating sexual harassment. 35-6). They note that social learning in general (and thussocial learning about deviant activities in particular) cannot beexplained simply in terms of direct reinforcement principles. The second assumption about social conformity often made by scholarsis that conformity is never absolute, but rather that group norms allow fora great deal of flexibility. Given that women (and men who are the victims of sexual harassment aswell) may feel that they have few remedies within the formal justicesystem, and given the difficulty of defining sexual harassment even whenpeople of good will attempt to do so, the arena seems an appropriate one inwhich to utilize the concepts of private justice, or "self-help" as Black(1983) terms it. The major value of such macro-level analysis is thatthey can provide insight into broad patterns of social inequality (such asracism or highly impermeable class systems) that might otherwise be ignoredand inappropriately disregarded by those seeking to understand broadpatterns of a particular activity in a society. Private justice is also attractive in the case when the "law may berelatively unavailable to those with grievances in comparison to those whohave offended them" (Black, 1983, p. This is almost always the casewhen a man harasses a woman, although the condition is exacerbated when theman is of higher economic status as well. In other words, people who assist in eliminating sexual harassment would be rewarded, and those practice it would be punished, with the issue included in some ways in all performance appraisals (Taylor, 1999, p. Stimuli canalso be reinforcing, which means that response rate increases when a givenstimulus is produced by a given response. Vicarious reinforcement and imitative learning. Putting aside this rhetorical quibble for themoment, it is no doubt true that people tend to conform to the norms oftheir group; it is equally true that any given group to which an individualconforms may not hold the same norms as other groups in society, even othergroups that are more powerful and more prestigious. The individual may learn them even with full knowledge of thatdisapproval, so long as members of his or her subgroup practice thesebehaviors. Such a combination of the perspective of both self-help or privatejustice and the classical ideas of social learning theory are less easilyput into action outside the workplace, where an enlightened and sympatheticmanagement can be relied upon to create and publicize new models ofbehavior - with new rewards and punishments. Two different types of social interactions in which self-help or kindsof private justice are likely to occur describe the relationships that mostoften obtain in situations in which sexual harassment occurs. Suchmacro-level theories can have predictive value, but are of little use whenattempting to discover or explain motive and so the researcher must (onceagain) match the level of analysis to the type of questions that s/he isseeking to answer. Black notesthat private justice is attractive when the law is "relatively unavailableboth to those with grievances and to those who are the objects of self-help, as when people of low status who are intimate have conflicts witheach other (Black, 1983, p. Taylor discusses a number of ways in which women can create negativefeedback (i.e. 7 ). It should be noted at this point that social learning theory is amicro-level theory of behavior because it seeks to explain behavior at thelevel of the individual. Reinforcements can be eitherpositive (or rewarding) or negative (or punitive) (Jeffery, 1965, pp. some environmental occurrence)produces a particular, predictable response. The journal of criminal law, criminology and police science, 294-3 .Taylor, J.K. 42). However, they offer alternative types ofrewards and punishments that only have currency within a relationship basedon emotional (and/or physical) intimacy. Bandura, Ross and Ross (1963, p. Whereas classical social theoreticians like Bentham had argued thatself-interest is the basis of human nature and human behavior - with theclear and in many ways commonsensical implication that criminal acts weresimply somewhat more extreme examples of self-interest than the kind ofactivity engaged in by the rest of the population - sociologists arguedthat all behaviors have social rather than psychological causes. While in a democracy the weak are protected by the rule of law, lawsare in fact always differentially enforced, and always (as a general rule)enforced less well against the powerful. Alternatively, this man might belong to the same normative socialgroup that his co-workers do, but may simply not conform as well as otherworkers do because of his lesser experience with the social system or hislower stake in it. If one were to put characters into thishypothetical positions, the sense of these propositions becomes quiteclear. (1999). This was a point ofargumentation that sociologists could be expected to adopt eagerly, for itgave to them a sort of professional exclusivity to the study of criminality(among other types of human behavior). Thus the connection between learned behavior andconformity to group ideals and norms is a complex one, depending on howprecisely and accurately the group an individual is supposed to belong tois defined and ideas about how well individuals are equipped to conform toa set of standards, given the desire to do so. The second difficulty insuppressing sexual harassment results from the fact that people havegenuinely different concepts of what constitute harassment, and what oneperson may do or propose in perfectly good faith is simply unacceptable tosomeone else. (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 199 , p. Crime as social control. Learningrequires both a teacher and a student and so predicates a dyad, that mostelemental form of human group. Peoplemay acquire new social responses or have their already existing socialresponses dramatically modified as a result of observing the behavior ofothers (and possibly the consequences of that behavior) without theobserver's receiving any direct response or experiencing any directreinforcement (Bandura, Ross and Ross, 1963, p. In otherwords, people do not learn only from their own direct experiences. Whilethe management of a company is not the same as a formal legal system, it isnot entirely distinct either in that both represent an external,authoritative institution with power above the level of the dyad. Journal of abnormal and social psychology, 6 1- 6 7.Black, D. Thus sexual harassment, if itcontains some element of pleasure for the harasser may continue so long asno obvious or visible punishment is meted out to harassers. New York: Cato Institute. 294-5). What to do when you don't want to call the cops. The answer to this criticismis, at one level, one may learn a great deal from a single individual, andone may also learn indirectly, by hearing about other people's actions orby experiencing them through mass media. (1963). An action may beboth deviant and commonplace. Thisdiscussion begins by examining these complexities and refinements ofcontemporary social learning theory. Women who seek justice against men(who may also be their bosses and are in most cases likely to have greatereconomic power) are disadvantaged from the start. The basic ideas expressed in social learning theory are relativelystraightforward; however, scholars have spent a great deal of time inarticulating exactly how people learn to respond to complicated socialstimuli within the environment of complex social systems and haverepeatedly refined their definitions of the terms of this model. Because such responses tendnot to be very complex ones, they have generally been of far less interestto social scientists than operant behaviors, which are behaviors emitted inthe presence of a given stimulus and maintained by their consequences(Jeffery, 1965, p. (1993). Except for a woman (or man)who is fearful of physical injury (and often even in such an extreme case),an individual has the choice of rewarding certain behaviors while punishingothers, and this rewards and punishments can be meted out entirely inprivate with no recourse to formal legal systems. (Or rather that behavior that deviates from the norms of largeand/or powerful groups may be learned just as easily as the norms of thatlarger group.) Since behavior is learned in either dyads or small groups,individuals may easily learn behaviors that the society as a whole does notapprove of. Given the implications of the social learning theory and Black'sconcept of private justice, we can craft a possible strategy for thevictims of sexual harassment to pursue in attempting to alleviate theproblems that they face - although such a strategy is not one that can bepursued entirely without help. punishment) for men who are sexual harassers and she clearlyunderstands the importance of establishing a system under which newbehaviors can be learned under nearly perfect classical conditioningcircumstances. In other words, both the carrot and the stick. This means that the norms of deviant groupsmay not be very different from the norms of mainstream society (Gottfredsonand Hirschi, 199 , p. (1965). 76). and Hirschi, T. Taylor (1999)reiterates many of these same ideas within the specific context of sexualharassment: If the idea is to lessen hostility in the workplace, an incremental approach in which women go into new fields, show that they are talented and competent, gain respect for their values and their differences by an assertive but friendly drawing of the line, and set the stage for the employment of many more women is what will bring lasting change (Taylor, 1999, p. Sociology takes as a central tenet the ideathat human behavior is essentially and deeply social. Criminal behavior and learning theory. Such differences are conditioned by age, gender, ethnicityand religious beliefs - as well as by personal preference - and are sovariable as to make legalistic concepts and definitions difficult to comeby. A reward may not in fact even be necessary: Ifthe deviant behavior carries some element of pleasure within it, it maysimply be enough that the person not be punished for the deviance (or notseeing others punished for deviance). This paper examines how ideas put forth by social theoreticians likeBandura and Black can be put into daily practical use by people fightingagainst sexual harassment, a habit that is learned through a series ofrewards and so which may be unlearned as well. This does seem to be a keyfactor, and means that elimination of workplace sexual harassment is not aperfect example of private justice in that it requires not only the consentbut also the cooperation of the power structure of an organization. American sociological review 48: 34-54.Gottfredson, M. However, there are in fact macro-level models ofbehavior that look at the aggregate behavior of different social subgroupsto determine how often such groups engage in certain kinds of acts. and Ross, S. Any deviance heappears to be expressing is accidental, resulting from someone outside hisgroup comparing his actions to the norms of his co-workers - a group towhich he holds memberships but does not normatively belong. Also, it is arguable that whilesexual harassment is illegal and often carries civil as well as criminalpenalties, it is certainly commonplace in our society. This may well be true, but it also has an unfortunatelevel of circularity to it. Before discussing how the concepts of private justice and sociallearning theory can be blended together to create a possible strategyagainst sexual harassment, a brief overview of the complex theoreticalperspective of social learning theory is in order. A woman who is being harassed by her husband has no similarly formalinfrastructure to turn to, and yet she too can use many of the same basicideas that Taylor, Black and Bandura put forth. 158). Sexual harassment is a widespread problem and one that is widelyacknowledged by a number of powerful institutions (as well as the victimsof the practice) and yet it remains difficult to counteract for severalreasons. 141). Stanford: Stanford University.Jeffery, C. This paper examines how a perspective that incorporates ideasabout private justice and perspectives taken from social learning theorycan suggest one possible strategy to reduce the problem of sexualharassment. (In contrast to theobjections to basic elements of social learning theory put forward by someresearchers, the work by Bandura, Ross and Ross should be seen not as arefutation of learning theory but simply as a modification of it, in whichlearning occurs not in a direct, classically tailored situation but stilldoes occur and produce repeated behaviors.) This model of indirect learning outlined by Bandura, Ross and Ross isthus a model of imitative behavior; in other words, people learn to act incertain ways because they have seen others rewarded for doing so. In other words, the man is in fact busily and intentionallyconforming to group norms of his particular subgroup. Learning theories of criminal behavior are essentially amoral in theirorientation: Social learning theories do not assume that people are eithergood or bad, inclined either towards charitable acts or to selfish ones.Put in a slightly different light, social learning theories posit thatdeviant behavior may be learned as well and as easily as conformistbehavior. At first this might seem such an obvious locus ofexplanation that it does not need to be specified: How else, after all,could one explain the behavior of individuals performing (deviant orotherwise) acts except through a micro-level theory that examines theactions of individuals? The importance of learning theory to sociological explanations ofcrime cannot be overstated. This in some ways makesthem necessarily less effective, for they lack the same kinds of sanctionsthat formal legal systems have. Or ratherthat all behaviors have social causes that include psychological elements,these latter mediated by social forces. One undeniable theoretical resultof this kind of thinking is that criminal behavior must be explained insocial terms. (199 ). Stimuli can be aversive, which means that the response rate willdecrease when a given stimulus is produced by a given response. Taylor praises a model developed by Barbara Gutek for its (implicit)basis in social learning theory. A general theory of crime. One can look at a man who continually and consistently violates hiscompany's stated norms by sexually harassing a colleague. 6 1) examine this possible refinementor variation on the role of learning in deviance (including criminality),again trying to determine how exactly deviant motivation is learned,sustained and repeated. Social learning theory gave tosociologists ammunition that criminal behavior could not in any adequateway be studied by traditional cognitive psychological means. Although the entire concept of learning theorymight seem at first to be a part of the study of basic human cognitiveprocesses and so to fall within the realm of psychology, in fact the ideaof learning necessarily takes the scholar into sociology, anthropology, andthe other sciences that study human behavior as a collective. Learning theory has at its core the concept of conditioning or theidea that behavior is related to an individual's environment. These definitions and in fact this entire model is commonsensical: Theyaccord with rational, everyday ideas about human behavior that the greatmajority of individuals use quite automatically. The first of the two primary reasons that sexual harassment is adifficult behavior to remove from society are that it is perpetuated ingeneral by the powerful against the weak - in this case, by men againstwomen.
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