Theories of interpersonal vulnerability, such as double jeopardy theory (Beal, 1970), posit that individuals are differentially targeted for victimization as a result of their relative marginalization across numerous social status and demographic variables. Women, as compared to men, are the primary targets of violence and victimization within their homes and at work (Denmark et al., 2007) and ethnic minorities have elevated rates of trauma exposure and interpersonal victimization compared to Whites (e.g., Finkelhor et al., 2007). Given that stress and trauma are directly related to well-being, these rates imply that examinations of social status variables, such as gender and race, are particularly relevant to our understanding of vulnerability to victimization and its psychological, physical, occupational, and academic consequences; yet the nexus of such variables is under-examined in the research literature to date.
To address these needs, my research foci revolve around ethnic minority health and well-being with an emphasis on the ways in which multiple social status dimensions (e.g., sex, race, age, social class) create unique experiences of victimization (sexual and racial harassment) within diverse groups. In particular, I examine the perceptions of those targeted, and the psychological, health, work, and academic outcomes following such experiences. Although my primary interests concern the experiences of ethnic minority women, my research uses samples that cross race, gender, and age to examine harassment among adults, bullying and harassment among adolescents, and ethnic minority health more generally. To this end, I also utilize multiple methodological strategies, recruit diverse samples from a variety of settings, and integrate theory from clinical and social psychology, sociology, feminist and critical race theory. As such, my research is advancing our collective knowledge on the ways in which experiences like harassment and bullying are similar and distinct across groups and how stress and victimization impact ethnic minority health.
Harassment as a function of race and gender
When I entered the field, empirical research on sexual harassment rarely examined whether the experience differed by race and racial harassment research rarely explored whether the experience differed by gender. Although the research has grown since that time, notable gaps remain. Namely, sexual and racial harassment research has failed to systematically integrate, conceptually or methodologically, race and gender concomitantly. My first line of research addresses this need by examining how sex and race influence harassment experiences.
My initial research questions built upon largely theoretical assertions that harassment manifests differently for Black women than for White women (Adams, 1997, Murrell, 1996). To examine this, I recruited professional Black women (e.g., accountants, executives, nurses, teachers) from two cities to participate in one of six focus groups discussing experiences of sexual and racial harassment in the workplace. This research revealed that Black women experienced relatively high levels of both sexual and racial harassment despite the potential protections offered by their higher occupational status. Further, participants reported harassment experiences that combined racism and sexism simultaneously, such as comments fusing race and gender (e.g., Black whore) and being asked for sexual advice as if by virtue of their gender and race, they were experts on sex (Buchanan, 2005a). The initial publication based on this study was one of the first to define and find empirical support for racialized sexual harassment among Black women and is the most frequently cited publication on this topic (Buchanan & Ormerod, 2002). To build upon this qualitative research and determine the generalizability of these findings, I conducted several studies using larger and often more diverse samples to examine sexual and/or racial harassment among working adults, military personnel, and college students.
Considering that half of all working women will experience sexual harassment and 40-76% of ethnic minorities experience racial harassment annually, the lifetime prevalence of harassment among women of color is likely to be higher than estimates for men of color or White women (Berdahl & Moore, 2006; Bergman & Drasgow, 2003). However, research on the relative prevalence of harassment across groups has been contradictory, with some studies finding that women of color report higher rates of sexual harassment than White women (e.g., Berdahl & Moore, 2006; Cortina et al., 1998) and others reporting either no race differences or that women of color have lower rates than White women (e.g., Gruber, 2003). After examining these studies, it became clear that focusing solely on the frequency of overall sexual harassment masks potential race differences. To address this concern, I examined the relative rates of gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual coercion -- subtypes of sexual harassment -- across Black and White women at different levels of organizational status and power. These data confirmed that there are significant differences across organizational status and across race, with Black women experiencing higher rates of sexualized forms of harassment (e.g., unwanted touch, sexual coercion), whereas White women experienced higher rates of gender harassment (e.g., comments that women do not belong in certain jobs). Race and status also interacted such that Black women of lower status reported the highest rates of sexual coercion (Buchanan, Settles & Woods, in press).
The above studies substantiated my earlier hypotheses that gender and race do influence the likelihood of experiencing sexual harassment. My next aim was to understand the extent to which sex and race predict the likelihood of experiencing both sexual and racial harassment and the target’s well-being subsequent to harassment. Despite evidence that experiencing the same trauma multiple times or experiencing multiple types of trauma is more detrimental than experiencing a single traumatic event or a single type of trauma (Green, et al., 2000; Krupnick, et al., 2004), few researchers have included multiple forms of harassment within the same study. As a result, little is known of their co-occurrence across populations or their mutual influences on psychological well-being, physical health, or academic/occupational outcomes. To reduce various confounds in previous studies, I examined the psychological and occupational outcomes associated with racial and sexual harassment among a single population, Black working women, from the same organization and limited their responses to include only those events that occurred within that work environment. Unlike past studies, I found that racial and sexual harassment did interact to predict outcomes; however, the interactive effects were found for two occupational variables, supervisor satisfaction and perceived organizational tolerance of harassment and not for psychological well-being (Buchanan & Fitzgerald, 2008). By focusing narrowly on the psychological effects of harassment, past researchers overlooked a key area affected by multiple forms of harassment, women’s perceptions of their organization and its leaders. Further, the emic, or within-group, design focusing on Black women within the same organization reduced external factors that may have suppressed this interaction effect.
Results from my study of over 2000 Black, multiracial, and White male and female college students also revealed new information regarding the influences of sex and race on rates of harassment as well as the influence of sexual and racial harassment on health and well-being. The results indicated that sexual and racial harassment commonly co-occurred and their frequencies were influenced by the target’s sex and race. Ethnic minorities were at higher risk, as compared to Whites, with multiracial men and women being at the greatest risk of being targeted for both. Racial harassment was more frequently directed toward men within ethnic minority groups, with the exception of Black men and women reporting equal rates. Second, sexual and racial harassment had individual and additive effects on each indicator of well-being (posttraumatic stress, depression, clinical symptomology, satisfaction with life, and health satisfaction) and interactive effects for a subset of health and wellness variables. The interactive effects indicated that in the presence of any racial harassment as sexual harassment increased, depression and general clinical symptomology increased and health satisfaction decreased. As expected, those experiencing low sexual harassment and low racial harassment fared better than those experiencing high levels of either and those experiencing high levels of both sexual harassment and racial harassment reported significantly worse outcomes overall. Last, the influence of sexual harassment and racial harassment on outcomes differed by race, sex, and type of harassment (3-way interaction), indicating for example, that the relationship between harassment and outcomes was strongest for multiracial and Black men and weakest for multiracial and Black women. These findings were driven largely by relatively low levels of distress among Black and Multiracial men at low levels of harassment, and conversely, the relatively high levels reported by Multiracial and Black women when harassment was low (Buchanan, Bergman, Woods, Bruce, & Lichty, under review).
Together these studies demonstrate that: 1) those who experience racial harassment are at far greater risk of experiencing sexual harassment (and vice versa), 2) this risk varies depending on one’s combined gender-race status, 3) there are individual, joint, and interactive effects of experiencing both sexual and racial harassment, and 4) sex and race further moderate the relationships between harassment and outcomes.
Based on the findings presented above, it was clear that the sex and race of the target were important determinants of the amount of harassment they experienced and indirectly influenced well-being following harassment. As such, it was important to explore related factors that may influence harassment and outcomes. One such factor is the race of the perpetrator. In a sample of Black women sexually harassed by either a White (cross-racial sexual harassment) or a Black man (intra-racial sexual harassment), we found that the rates of gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual coercion did not differ by the perpetrator’s race. However, using the racialized sexual harassment scale (Buchanan, 2005b) we found that cross-racial sexual harassment was more likely to include harassment that focused simultaneously on participant’s race and gender and involved higher-status perpetrators (e.g., a supervisor as opposed to a coworker) compared with intra-racial harassment. Perhaps as a result, women appraised cross-racial sexual harassment as more offensive, threatening, and frightening than intra-racial sexual harassment, which in turn was associated with increased posttraumatic stress symptoms (Woods, Buchanan & Settles, in press). This study was the first quantitative examination of the effect of perpetrator race on outcomes using actual experiences of sexual harassment (versus vignettes of hypothetical harassment) and provides unique insight into the many ways in which race influences harassment.
In addition to factors external to the target (e.g., perpetrator race), it is important to understand how variability among targets on factors that may reflect cultural differences might influence harassment outcomes. For example, feminist theory argues that feminist attitudes are protective when women experience gender-related mistreatment (Fischer & Good, 2004; Klonis et al., 1997). Although this has been supported in samples of primarily White women, this had not been tested among Black women. Although counter-intuitive, double-consciousness theory, which asserts that feminist consciousness will be associated with greater consciousness regarding racial oppression (Gay & Tate, 1998), and sociohistorical differences between Black and White women’s interpretations of feminist and traditional gender attitudes suggest that whereas feminist attitudes buffer the negative effects of sexual harassment for White women, the same attitudes may exacerbate these negative effects for Black women. Using a sample of sexually harassed Black and White women in college, we found sexually harassed Black women with feminist attitudes reported more clinical symptoms and posttraumatic stress and less life satisfaction than sexually harassed Black women with traditional gender-role attitudes. For White women, feminist attitudes buffered the effects of sexual harassment on their well-being (Rederstorff, Buchanan, & Settles, 2007). These results imply that gender and gender-role attitudes function very differently for Black and White women, raising the question of whether or not their basic perceptions of their gender also differ. In order to more fully understand the ways in which Black and White women perceive their gender and gender-roles, my colleagues and I analyzed data from focus groups of Black and White women and found that they perceived their gender-roles and the benefits of womanhood differently (Settles, Pratt-Hyatt, & Buchanan, in press). These qualitative results support our findings regarding the effects of feminist attitudes on sexually harassed women; to the extent that Black and White women perceive their gender-roles and womanhood differently, feminist gender-role attitudes should be differentially protective when they are confronted with negative gender-related events.
Together, the above studies represent a unique body of research that underscores the importance of examining sex, race, and their joint influences on victimization experiences. Further, this research demonstrates the need to assess multiple forms of harassment when examining psychological and organizational stressors among women of color. By considering these factors, I have been able to empirically investigate many issues of relevance to ethnic minority women, as well as relationships between harassment, appraisal, and outcomes that had hitherto been hypothesized, but unexamined. While there has been several strong theoretical works considering the role of race and sex on victimization and harassment, my program of research is among the first to empirically investigate these issues in a comprehensive manner that includes qualitative and quantitative methods across diverse samples of men and women from a variety of work and academic environments. In recognition of the contribution of this research, I recently received the Carolyn Payton Early Career Award from the American Psychological Association (Div. 35), and research awards from the International Coalition Against Sexual Harassment and the Association for Women in Psychology. My mentee has also received research awards and grants for research we have done on this topic, including the American Psychological Association’s Dalmas A. Taylor Award for Outstanding Student Research (from Division 12: Clinical Psychology). This research has resulted in several peer-reviewed publications in print, in press, and under review, as well as dozens of presentations at national and international conferences. Further, I actively involve graduate and undergraduate students in all facets of my research including publishing in peer-reviewed journals and books and presenting research at professional conferences.
Gendered bullying and early manifestations of harassment among adolescents.
My research on sexual harassment with adults led me to question how these adult workplace behaviors develop and whether or not similar experiences are reported among adolescents in schools. In a second line of research, I began examining gendered bullying among adolescents, which includes a variety of ways in which bullying differentially targets someone due to his or her gender or is used to reinforce stereotyped gender roles. In our qualitative interviews of teachers, we found that teachers defined harassment and bullying very narrowly, focusing on more extreme behaviors (e.g., physical contact, overtly sexual comments). Further, they were more likely to dismiss such behaviors when a relationship existed between the students or if the teacher him or herself had a friendly or mentoring relationship with the perpetrator (Anagnostopoulos, Buchanan, Periera & Lichty, in press). These biases differentially protected some students (e.g., outgoing, well-liked students) while overlooking the experiences of other students (e.g., gay and lesbian students, or those being victimized within a friendship or a dating relationship). Further, teachers were uncertain of the extent to which school anti-harassment policies addressed more ambiguous behaviors and as a result, were reluctant to reprimand offending students unless the offense was egregious (Buchanan, Anagnostopoulos, Periera & Lichty, in progress). In a separate study, we examined the sexual harassment policies of over 780 schools across several states and we found that over 80% of schools were not in compliance with the federal recommendations regarding harassment policies. Thus, teachers’ confusion regarding which behaviors are covered under their school’s anti-harassment policies may be valid. Further these gaps in the school policies increases students risk for being harassed, hampers teachers ability to respond, and exposes schools to potentially costly legal entanglements (Lichty, Torres, Valenti, & Buchanan, in press).
Ethnic Minority Health.
My broader interest is in factors that affect the well-being of ethnic minorities, and Black women in particular. I have collaborated with Dr. Tamara Baker at the University of South Florida to examine health and mental health among Black women. Our first paper explored how depression and locus of control affect older Black women’s experience and perceptions of chronic pain (Baker, Buchanan & Corson, 2008). We found that Black women with an internal locus of control regarding their health reported significantly more pain than women who felt there was little they could do to control their health. Our findings run counter to the literature that defines perceived control over one's physical and mental health (internal locus of control) as protective (e.g., Cross et al., 2006; Cousson-Gelie et al., 2005). We have also completed a review of factors that result in health disparities that disproportionately affect Black women (Baker, Buchanan, & Spencer, under review). This line of research reflects my continued interest in ethnic minority health and well-being more broadly and in how status variables such as race and gender intersect to influence the experiences of women of color in the U.S.
Current and Future Research.
Over the next several years, I will expand each of these three lines of research in order to: 1) better understand the interface of target characteristics (e.g., ethnicity, age, gender) and traumatic experiences, such as harassment, 2) determine the extent to which adolescent bullying and harassment manifest differently based upon these characteristics, and 3) explore additional ways in which race, sex, and social class influence psychological/physical health and coping among ethnic minorities in the U.S.
Harassment as a function of race and gender.
In addition to researching the intersections of race and gender with actual experiences of harassment, I am also interested in the ways in which witnesses’ perceptions of harassment are influenced by the race and sex of the target and the perpetrator. Past studies have used written vignettes of harassment manipulating the race of the target and perpetrator and found that individuals perceive harassment directed toward women of color as less severe than harassment of White women and that harassment of Black women by Black men is more likely to be perceived as humorous than harassing (Mecca & Rubin, 1999; Shelton & Chavous, 1999). One limitation of this research is that written vignettes require explicit mention of the race and gender of the target and the perpetrator, which may affect participant responses. To improve upon this design, I used professional actors to produce videos of harassment scenarios that were identical, but manipulated the race of the perpetrator and the target. Initial findings are consistent with my hypothesis and indicated that observers do rate harassment vignettes differently based on the race of the target (Black or White). I am now examining how the race of the perpetrator as well as various combinations of perpetrator and target race influence perceptions of harassment. In addition to rating the severity of the harassment, participants also indicated how the case should be handled if the target were to file a complaint (ranging from firing the perpetrator for harassment to firing the target for filing a false report). These findings will provide additional understanding of the ways in which bystanders perceive harassment based on the race of the individuals involved. Further, they will indicate whether or not the outcome of harassment complaints vary as a result of target and perpetrator race, providing insight into how such cases are handled within organizations.
Gendered bullying and early manifestations of harassment among adolescents.
My current research with bullying and harassment among adolescents has focused largely on the ways in which harassment is used to reinforce gender-role expectations and the challenges school administrators face in addressing these behaviors (e.g., barriers to teacher interventions, limitations of school anti-harassment policies). In the next phase of this research I plan to explore student perceptions of such behaviors and extend the examination to bullying and harassment based on race, sexual orientation, and the intersection of social status variables. This will involve qualitative interviews and surveys of students from more diverse schools, including students from a variety of ethnic groups, and recruiting additional participants through with organizations that work with gay and lesbian youth, such as the Ruth Ellis Center near Detroit, MI. Samples such as these will allow me to examine the extent to which racialized sexual harassment occurs within youth groups, incorporate harassment based on sexual orientation, and study the effects of multiple victimization experiences on adolescent health, well-being, and academic achievement.
Health and well-being among marginalized groups.
I am a co-Investigator on a $1.3 million grant submitted to the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) examining the roles of discrimination, perceived harassment, and general life stress on the drinking and health behaviors of young Black and White adults. This will be a longitudinal study examining potential risk and protective factors (e.g., racial identity and coping) as well as the moderating effects of sex and race. In addition to this project I am a co-PI on a separate project examining the life histories of Black women with severe mental illness. This project focuses on participants’ understanding of their illness, potential recovery, social support, and societal stigma as well as their histories of trauma prior and subsequent to their illness.
References
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Anagnostopoulos, D., Buchanan, N. T., Pereira, C., & Lichty, L. F. (in press). School Staff Responses to Gender-Based Bullying: An Exploratory Study. Educational Policy.
Baker, T. A., Buchanan, N. T., Corson, N. (in press). Factors influencing chronic pain intensity in older Black women: Examining depression, locus of control and physical health. Journal of Women’s Health.
Baker, T. A., Buchanan, N. T., & Spencer, T. (under review). Health disparities, social inequities, and contextual factors: Is the physical health and psychological well-being of African American women still in peril?
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Settles, I. H., Pratt-Hyatt, J. S., & Buchanan, N. T. (in press). Through the lens of race: Black and White women’s perceptions of their gender. Psychology of Women Quarterly.
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Woods, K. C., Buchanan, N. T., & Settles, I. H. (in press). Sexual harassment across the color line: Experiences and outcomes of cross- vs. intra-racial sexual harassment among Black women. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology.
First author won the American Psychological Association’s (Division 12) Dalmas A. Taylor Award for Outstanding Student Research based on this paper.
This paper reflects an equal contribution among the authors, which is noted in the paper. The first author is a graduate student who completed an initial draft as a comprehensive examination.
My research on bullying and adolescent harassment has been highlighted in MSU Today and the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Stations’ publication, Futures.
Underlined names are student collaborators.
