Imagining a stranger harassment situation: the impact of stranger harassment coping strategies on women’s emotions, self-objectification and felt power

• Autor(a) principal: Jakobi, Antonia Laura Philipa
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/23384
• topic: Stranger harassment; Coping strategies; Bem-estar -- Well-being; Assédio a estranhos; Estratégias de coping

Stranger harassment belongs to the daily reality of many women in public places all over the world. Nonetheless, only few scholars have set out to examine this issue. Those who have, identified its detrimental consequences for the target. The present study entailed a multi- methodological design to explore whether some ways of reacting to stranger harassment are more beneficial for women’s well-being than others. Moreover, it investigated whether benevolent sexist attitudes influence the choice of specific coping strategies. 134 female individuals took a women’s perspective in an imaginative stranger harassment situation or neutral situation, upon which they answered a set of questions to assess their reactions, emotions, and self-perception emerging from the situation. The results did not confirm benevolent sexism as a moderator influencing the choice of coping strategies. However, active, passive and benign coping strategies were found to be mediating the effect of the stranger harassment on high negative emotions, while only passive and benign coping strategies mediated the effect of stranger harassment on the reduction of felt power. Moreover, negative emotions and felt power were significantly different between imagining a stranger harassment vs. a neutral interaction. The present study underlined that all coping strategies go along with various up- and downsides, all of which do not to conceal that stranger harassment is the manifestation of gender inequality. It revealed the complexity of (coping with) such situations and emphasized the necessity of future research as well as practical implications to further understand and combat stranger harassment.