Suchergebnisse

In 2009, the Supreme Court decided, in Gross v. FBL, that the law governing age discrimination should be interpreted in a stricter manner than before. After Gross, age discrimination claims are tried under but for causality in which the plaintiff's age must be the direct cause of the adverse action, as opposed to mixed motive causality allowable under Title VII, in which age would only have to be a motivating factor. Previous research has shown that but for instructions lead to more pro‐defendant verdicts, regardless of case strength, as compared to mixed motive instructions. This study reports on a simulated jury experiment that sought to uncover the influence of stereotypes concerning older workers on juror verdicts in an age discrimination case. Older worker stereotypes were assessed using the Stereotype Content Model's warmth and competence dimensions. In line with previous research, participants were more likely to find for the defendant under but for instructions, as compared to mixed motive. Further, mock jurors' stereotypes predicted their verdicts, but only under the but for instructions, suggesting that jurors rely on stereotypes when they are limited in the case facts they can consider. Implications for policy changes and future research directions are discussed.

AbstractShould businesses be allowed to deny services based on their strongly held religious beliefs? Despite the recent Supreme Court Case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado, this question of the right to discriminate remains unanswered. Given the currently ambiguous legal area, it is important to understand whether the public supports these laws. The current study examines both general support for the law and under what conditions people support it. The service provided and the religion of the service provider were both manipulated while religiosity and system justification were examined as potential moderators. Service type was the only significant experimental predictor of support, with participants less supportive of the law when reading about a marriage certificate being denied due to religious reasons than a wedding cake and a wedding ceremony being denied. Religiosity, but not system justification, moderated the relationship between service type and support for the law.

Sexual objectification is a significant problem that permeates all areas of women's lives including the workplace. This research examines the impact of sexual objectification on women in work settings by integrating objectification, sexual harassment, and affective forecasting theories. We used a laboratory analogue that included undergraduate women who actually experienced objectification during a work interview (i.e., experiencers) and third‐party predictors (including female and male undergraduates as well as female and male community workers) who anticipated the effects of objectification (i.e., predictors). We measured actual and anticipated emotions, performance, and sexual harassment following objectification. We found that both mild and severe objectification caused weaker positive affect, stronger negative affect, worse work performance, and higher sexual harassment judgments, but these effects were primarily driven by predictors anticipating worse outcomes following objectification compared to what experiencers actually reported. We also found that experiencers' responses to objectification were moderated by benevolent sexism with women lower in benevolent sexism responding more similarly to predictors relative to women higher in benevolent sexism. Both experiencers and predictors evaluated interviewers who engaged in objectification equally negatively. Finally, we explored differences between predictors who were female and male undergraduate students versus community workers and found that these parties anticipated different consequences, depending on worker status and gender. Implications for sexual objectification, sexual harassment, and affective forecasting theories as well as practical implications for policy and law are discussed.