Women′s Perceptions of Social-Sexual Behavior: A Cross-Cultural Replication

Abstract

Japanese female undergraduates (N = 258) read a vignette depicting social-sexual behavior toward a woman at work and indicated their perceptions of the incident, the coping responses expected from the target, and their own sex-role attitudes and social self-esteem. Three contextual variables (actor status, actor-target familiarity, and the sexuality of body touching) were manipulated in the vignette. Hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that women having liberal sex-role attitudes perceived the behavior to be more inappropriate and expected more assertive coping responses of the target than women having conservative sex-role attitudes, and that women having low social self-esteem perceived the behavior to be more sexually intimidating than women having high social self-esteem. Only the sexuality of body touching influenced women′s perceptions. Similarities and differences in the perceptions of Japanese and American women are discussed.