An empirical examination of sexual harassment and Stockholm syndrome in relation to essential and non-essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

As COVID-19 spread and organisations shut down, many workers continued working through adverse conditions. This study appropriates Stockholm syndrome to highlight privilege and power differentials between essential and non-essential workers during the pandemic. One hundred and twelve U.S. workers (M_age = 35.91, 50.9% female, 49% essential workers, M_{hours worked per week}= 48.11) completed an online survey during the height of national lockdowns (April to June of 2020). Results of correlations and a one-way multivariate analysis of variance suggest that Stockholm syndrome and sexual harassment are strongly related and that essential workers scored higher on both Stockholm syndrome and sexual harrassment than non-essential workers. The present study supports Stockholm syndrome as a framework for studying workplace injustice and contributes to novel literature regarding how the pandemic has exacerbated social inequities. Practical implications draw from existing literature on sexual harrassment and demonstrate the need for awareness of worker mistreatment during challenging times.

PRACTICE IMPACT STATEMENT

The current research is novel such that it is the first to connect Stockholm syndrome to instances of workplace sexual harassment during COVID-19. Our findings support the implementation of employee assistance programs and zero-tolerance harassment policies to protect workers in all occupations, especially those most susceptible to heightened inequalities as a result of the ongoing pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual harassment
• Stockholm syndrome
• COVID-19
• essential workers

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Fiama Mastrangelo and Helena De Oliveira for their assistance with survey design and creation in earlier stages of this project. The corresponding author would also like to thank David Gavin for his assistance with presenting this work to the Society of Industrial-Organisational Psychology’s annual conference in 2021.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declaration of Interest Statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

Notes

1 The term “target” is used intentionally in this paper. Some discourse has indicated the term “victim” may have negative connotations for some individuals that have experienced, in this instance, sexual harassment (Kelly et al., 1996). In this case, these individuals tend to prefer the term “survivor” or “target” as the term “victim” may increase negative feelings about the experience. On the other hand, other sources, such as the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN), use the term “victim” when referring to someone who has recently been affected by sexual violence, and the term “survivor” when discussing the short- or long-term effects of sexual violence. Ultimately, RAINN (2021) describes that the terminology used should be based on the person of interests' preference. So, because we did not include any items in our survey regarding term preference, we opted for a more neutral term (i.e. target) to avoid polarization on this issue.

2 We thank an anonymous reviewer for the suggestion of discussing the impact of source on the observed relationships. We tested source using a factorial MANOVA. Harassment source was limited to two categories (supervisor and coworker) due to only having five customer perpetrators in the sample. Essential worker status and harassment source were entered as independent variables and Stockholm syndrome and SH were entered as dependent variables. Although there were no significant main effects for source on either dependent variable, the interaction between harassment source and essential worker status approached significance for both sexual harassment [F(1,90) = 2.01, p = .14] and Stockholm syndrome [F(1,90) = 2.87, p = .14]. If significant, the nature of the interactions would suggest higher Stockholm syndrome and sexual harassment for essential workers (vs. non-essential workers) harassed by a supervisor (vs. coworker).