The Bystander Effect by Catherine Sanderson

Author:Catherine Sanderson [A. Sanderson, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-02-28T17:00:00+00:00

Will You Confront Your Boss?

When I was in college, I was with my boss one day when we were driving to a meeting, and he was having trouble finding a parking place. He drove around for a bit, but we were by this point late for the meeting, so he pulled into a handicapped parking spot and parked the car. We got out of the car and he turned to me, grinned, and started limping. I said nothing.

My failure to call out my boss is hardly unique. Most people will do nothing when they witness offensive acts by those in powerful positions. They may wonder, “Will speaking up cost me a promotion? A raise? Will I lose my job or get a reputation as a troublemaker?”

When asked about hypothetical situations, people usually say that they would have the courage to confront bad behavior. But in reality, most of us fail to act when we find ourselves actually facing such a situation. It isn’t that we don’t recognize right from wrong, or realize, if given an opportunity to evaluate the situation dispassionately, that some intervention is called for. Something appears to stop us from acting on our convictions.

Julie Woodzicka at Washington and Lee University and Marianne LaFrance at Yale conducted a study that allowed them to compare what people say with what they do.[1] They recruited young women (age eighteen to twenty-one) and asked them to read and respond to a written scenario about a job interview. Participants read the following passage: “Imagine that you are interviewing for a research assistant position. You are being interviewed by a male (age thirty-two) in an office on campus. Below are several of the questions that he asks you during the course of the interview. Please read each question and indicate how you would respond and feel. Write how you think you would react, not how you think you should react. Indicate how you would actually behave, think, and/or feel.”

The three questions were: “Do you have a boyfriend?” “Do people find you desirable?” and “Do you think it is important for women to wear bras to work?”

Most of the participants (62 percent) reported that they would confront the harasser in some way, either by asking him why he was asking the question or by telling him that the question was inappropriate. Twenty-eight percent of the women reported that they would respond even more forcefully, either by rudely confronting the interviewer or by leaving the interview. And 68 percent reported that they would refuse to answer at least one of the three questions. The results clearly indicated that when faced with sexual harassment, participants assumed that they would feel angry or indignant and be confrontational. But would they really?

In a follow-up study to test this important question, the same researchers recruited another group of women to interview for what they believed to be an actual research assistant job and then subjected these applicants to the same three sexually harassing questions. Not one of these women refused to answer even a single question.

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