SH is unwelcomed behavior related to one’s gender and one’s sexuality that is perceived by the recipient as unpleasant and that causes the recipient to feel psychological distress (Gelfand et al. 1995). In their model of SH, based on empirical data, Fitzgerald et al. (1995) identify three types of SH. The most frequent type which is also assumed to be the least hurtful is gender harassment; this entails verbal and nonverbal behaviors that insult or degrade a person because of his or her sex. The second type of SH, i.e., unwanted sexual attention, involves unwanted sexual advances, including unwelcomed touching or constant attempts at establishing an intimate or sexual relationship. Finally, sexual coercion involves threats and/ or promises that the target will be granted extra opportunities (e.g., promotion) or s/he will be spared from negative events (e.g., will not be fired) if s/he engages in a sexual relationship with the perpetrator. Research on effects of all types of SH shows that its victims suffer from numerous psychological and somatic problems, which include, but are not limited to, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, headaches, and decrease in sleep or weight loss (Pina and Gannon 2012; Willness et al. 2007; Charney and Russell 1994).

In addition, these effects are not limited to women. It should be noted that even though SH is more frequently experienced by women, men are not only victims of SH but the number of claims of SH of men is also increasing (Foote and Goodman-Delahunty 2005). Several studies show men of different ages and backgrounds to be victims of different types of SH. For example, in a study by Kearney and Rochlen (2011) on male college students, 73.7 % of Mexican-American students and 84.4 % of Caucasian students were found to have experienced SH. Settles et al. (2011) found that among the US armed service personnel, 19.4 % of males (n = 1764) and 51.7 % of females (n = 4540) have experienced some forms of SH. In a Norwegian employee sample, it was found that 18.4 % experienced some forms of SH, while 0.9 % of men and 0.8 % of women stated that they had experienced SC (i.e., had been asked to have sex in order to avoid something or to gain something; Birkeland et al. 2010). Overall, SH is a widespread problem that, depending on the estimations, affected or will affect from 30 to 50 % of women and from 10 to 15 % of men (Charney and Russell 1994; Directorate-General for Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs Unit V/D.5 1998). Evidently, the prevalence of different types of SH is not the same. For example, a study on 208 employed female students (Hitlan et al. 2006) showed that 70 % of them experienced gender harassment and 53 % experienced unwanted sexual attention. Leskinen et al. (2011) showed that women in the military and female lawyers experience gender harassment in the absence of other types of SH more often than gender harassment with unwanted sexual attention or just unwanted sexual attention or sexual coercion. However, they showed that even the instances of “just” gender harassment are related in a negative way to women’s psychological well-being and health and to increased stress levels. A study on 2319 female and 1627 male former reservists (Street et al. 2007) showed that 72.8 % of women and 42.0 % of men experienced one of the forms of SH, with lewd comments being the most common, followed by negative gender related remarks, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual coercion as the least common form of SH. American Department of Defense’s SH study (Department of Defense 2013) on 63,177 male and 45,301 female active duty members showed that overall, 23 % of women and 4 % of men experienced SH in the past 12 months. Forty-one percent of women and 20 % of men experienced gender harassment, 23 % of women and 5 % of men experienced unwanted sexual attention, and 8 % of women and 2 % of men experienced sexual coercion.

SH appears to be also prevalent at the workplace in Poland, where the presented studies were carried out. According to a study conducted by Public Opinion Research Center (Centrum Badania Opinii Społecznej 2007) on 424 employees, 22 % of the participants witnessed lewd comments, 7 % experienced or witnessed unwanted sexual attention from their colleagues and 4 % from their supervisors, and 2 % declared knowing of a situation when a person benefited from having a sexual relationship with their supervisor. Moreover, 5 % of men and 13 % of women claimed to have been victims of lewd comments and that every 20th woman experienced unwanted sexual attention, while “men [constitute] just a few cases” (p. 8). Furthermore, 36 % of Polish high school age students experienced some forms of sexual violence and it seems that adolescents are more likely to be victims of SH than adults (Izdebski 2012). A study on SH in public places showed that 85 % of women and 44 % of men (n = 818; 72 men) experienced it at least once and that both Polish men and women agree on what constitutes SH (Gober and Roszak 2012). A newer study on the prevalence of SH in Poland (Sulej and Jablonska 2015; Roszak 2015) showed that when asked if they ever experienced “unwanted courtship, erotic provocations, or sexual proposals,” 11.3 % of women and 6.8 % of men answered “often” or “a few times” and 12.7 % of women and 14.7 % of men answered rarely.

Waldo et al. (1998) studied the SH of men and found that they evaluated lewd comments as less upsetting than unwanted sexual attention (no men in their samples experiences sexual coercion). Similarly, Gerrity (2000) compared the outcomes of gender harassment and unwanted sexual attention among male university employees and showed that the latter had a stronger negative impact on the emotional health, depression, anxiety levels, or self-esteem. However, a study by Langhout et al. (2005) showed how the frequency with which different types of SH occur can influence the level of stress that it causes. For example, unwanted sexual attention seems to be equally stressful whether it occurred once or multiple times, while the level of stress increases with the number of gender harassment (lewd comments and negative gender-related remarks) experiences.

Research results suggest that experience of SH has equal impact on men’s and women’s psychological health and in some cases has a greater impact on men’s well-being. A meta-analysis carried out by Willness et al. (2007) showed that SH is linked to numerous mental health problems (such as anxiety, depression, and negative mood), decreased well-being, and increased PTSD levels; it is also related to such physical health symptoms such as nausea, headaches, shortness of breath, or exhaustion. As shown by Birkeland et al. (2010), it is not one’s sex that influences the impact SH has on a person but the very fact of being a SH victim. Both men and women who experienced frequent and explicit SH were found to have a higher number of mental health problems, compared to those who did not experience it at all. In addition, male victims of SH experienced lower job satisfaction than female victims. Among former reservists, in a model with participants’ sex, SH, and interaction of the two as predictors, SH was found to be the strongest predictor of depression, and at higher levels of SH, it was the men that reported more depression symptoms and worse overall mental health. Additionally, when cases of sexual assault were removed, male SH victims were found to experience higher levels of PTSD than women. Moreover, men who experienced SH were the most likely to suffer from PTSD, depression, and mental health problems (Street et al. 2007a, b). Similarly, in a sample of Gulf War I veterans, the intensity of both depression and anxiety rose more sharply for men than for women with the increase of SH levels (Vogt et al. 2005). Another study on military personnel showed a positive linear relationship between the frequency of SH and psychological and physiological problems among both men and women (Magley et al. 1999). Men and women who found different types of SH (gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual coercion) to be frightening experienced similar levels of distress (Settles et al. 2011), additionally, for men the perception of SH as bothersome that lead to their heightened intensity of distress. In a different study by the same team (Settles et al. 2014), the relationship between frightening appraisals of SH acts and psychological distress was stronger for men than women.

Street (2009) claims that SH can have different negative impact on men and women. Men who experienced sexual trauma are more at risk for mental health problems, they experience strong feelings of shame and self-blame, and can suffer from substance abuse. Analyzing the medical records of American Army veterans, Kimerling et al. (2007) showed that experiences of military sexual trauma (which includes sexual harassment and sexual assault) are strongly linked to mental and psychical health problems among men and women. Both men and women are at a high risk for dissociative, eating, and depression disorders. A PTSD diagnosis, alcohol problems, and anxiety problems can also happen to both men and women but seem to be more likely among women. Adjustment disorders, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, and psychosis are more common among men. It should be noted that the majority of samples used in SH research comes from military populations, among which, according to popular stereotypes, men might be expected not to fold under the pressure of SH. However, Willness et al. (2007) used the military vs civilian status as a potential moderator in a meta-analysis of the consequences of SH, and the results suggest it to be a significant only in case of work satisfaction. Other SH outcome variables, such as coworker satisfaction, or organizational commitment, mental health, and physical health were not influenced by the military vs civilian status.

Overall, male victims of SH are often found to experience negative outcomes of SH equally or more severe than their female colleagues. All in all, it seems that while women suffer more frequently from SH in their work and private life, when SH occurs and is of equivalent intensity, it affects men and women at least to the same extent, causing mental health and physical problems of similar severity and in some cases causing the men to suffer more than women (e.g., Street et al. 2007a, b; Magley et al. 1999).

The Perception of the Consequences of Sexual Harassment

In contrast to the evidence presented above, the literature on the ordinary person’s perception of SH suggests that women’s experience of SH is seen as more traumatic than men’s. There are studies that assess to what degree the given behavior can be perceived as harassing (LaRocca and Kromrey 1999) or how upset the victim of gender harassment and unwanted sexual attention might be (McKinney 1992). These studies show that male victims are perceived to be less harassed, less upset, and less injured. In other studies, the participants are asked to imagine how they would feel if they should become victims of SH. Compared to men, women assumed they might be more anxious and especially so when the type of SH in question is sexual coercion (Berdahl et al. 1996). When asked to imagine that they had been asked directly by a colleague of the opposite sex if they want to have sexual relationship with them, the majority of men thought they would be flattered, while the majority of women thought they would be offended (Konrad and Gutek 1986). In comparison to men, women also thought that they would be affected more should they be touched on their genitalia by an acquaintance (Struckman-Johnson and Struckman-Johnson 1993). This shows a clear pattern, indicating that the perceived effect SH has on its male victims is minimized whether the evaluation is aimed at a hypothetical victim or at oneself in a hypothetical victimizing situation.

The Present Study

Given the mismatch between the reality and the perception of the effects of SH on men, we seek to better understand how male and female victims and perpetrators of SH are perceived. The presented research adds to the literature, as the previously mentioned studies do not pay detailed attention to perception of SH victims’ distress, nor to how these victims are perceived to experience the event, nor to evaluation of the characteristics of male and female victims of SH. Overall, we focused on analyzing what is the social perception of SH victims’ suffering, which was not done thus far in such detail, and what is the evaluation of the SH perpetrators, which, to the best of our knowledge, has not been analyzed. Moreover, we did not find any studies concerning perceptions of SH or its victims and perpetrators conducted in Poland.

To verify the perceived level of psychological suffering (perception of emotions) and of victims’ reactions to the event, we use variables commonly used in research on SH victims, such as depression, anxiety, somatic symptoms, or emotions connected to the event with the use of measures often used in studies concerning actual experiences of SH victims, thus eliminating a potential source of a discrepancy between lay and scientific perceptions of victim’s suffering. We also study the evaluation of the perpetrator’s personal characteristics which was not done so far, to the best of our knowledge. For the evaluation of perpetrators (person evaluation), we use variables typically used in social perception research, such as communion and agency characteristics (also labeled as morality and competence or socially and intellectually good–bad traits), which have been established by numerous studies (e.g., Wojciszke 1997) to constitute the two main dimensions of social judgment. Communion is an especially important dimension when evaluating others and agency when judging oneself. Additionally, the fact that somebody is liked depends mostly on how communal s/he is perceived to be, while evaluation of a person’s agency influences the level of respect s/he deserves (Wojciszke et al. 2009). As such, low evaluation on any of the dimensions (communion, agency, liking, and respect) constitutes negative evaluation of a person.

We therefore decided to explore the perceived consequences of SH for male and female victims, as well as the evaluation of the perpetrator. Taking into consideration that men and women experience SH and are influenced by it to a similar extent, yet the social perception of male and female victims of SH seems to differ, we hypothesize that there exists a minimization of male suffering effect. As such, we put forward the following hypotheses:

1. Male victims of SH are perceived to suffer less psychological damage from SH (studies 1 and 2). 2. Perpetrators of SH on female victims are evaluated more negatively than perpetrators of SH on male victims (studies 1 and 2). 3. Male victims are perceived to see SH in less negative way than female victims (study 2).

Moreover, the previously described studies do not compare SH to other types of assault, thus providing information on SH but not showing a wider perspective from which we could learn whether female victims are perceived to suffer less than male victims only in case of SH or if it is a more general phenomenon. For this reason, in study 2, we compare the evaluation of victim’s suffering and the evaluation of the perpetrator in case of SC and in case of a different type of coercion, namely, a financial one, to answer the question if the MMS effect is specific to SH or does it occur in other types of assaults.