what to do when an employee says someone is making them feel uncomfortable
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Do certain people give you, for lack of a better term, the creeps? When you're almost them, do y'all accept the feeling that they're looking you over and mayhap judging you? What is information technology that makes you experience and then strange in their presence? If you're lucky, y'all can move out of their sight and non take to deal with their unwanted gaze. However, you may have no choice if y'all're stuck with them in a meeting or at someone's firm for a small social gathering. What makes things worse is that you don't know exactly what information technology is that gives you this feeling of discomfort — but you definitely know it's there.
In a new report on a specific form of interpersonal discomfort, Tel Aviv University's Orly Bareket and colleagues (2018) examined the correlates of sexually objectifying stares as directed at women by men. Conspicuously, if you're the target of such unwanted attention, you know simply how miserable it makes you feel that certain parts of your body are existence examined in excruciating detail. Every bit noted by Bareket and her coauthors, "Sexual objectification is the perception of the human being trunk merely as an object of sexual use" (p. 1). When the objectification takes the form of an ogle or leer, the target (generally a woman) tin can experience a range of deleterious outcomes such as impaired cognitive performance, feelings of actual shame, and anxiety over her physique. If you've been through this feel, y'all know that the objectifying gaze can become a lark from whatever it is you're supposed to be doing. Instead of concentrating on the task at hand, you start to question whether at that place's something ugly or defective about your appearance.
There is inquiry on people who appoint in this objectifying gaze behavior, and as summarized by the authors, it includes the fact that men who leer are also more likely to perpetrate sexual assaults. Even if they don't go to this extreme, their tendency to wait at a adult female's body rather than her face ways that they are less able to communicate effectively, because they miss out on the many nonverbal cues provided by the face. It's possible, farther, that by objectifying female person targets, these men approximate them every bit "less competent, warm, and moral, likewise equally less suitable for leadership" (p. 2). On the other hand, as the authors suggest, you might look at another person'southward body if you're in search of a romantic partner and are in a context where such gazes get less inappropriate. Nonetheless, you wouldn't make a judgment about who to become intimately involved with on the basis of that person's body alone. You would also desire to assess such attributes equally personality and intelligence, which require that y'all look at the person'due south face every bit well equally the body.
Objectification theory suggests that the tendency to separate a gaze at a woman's torso from the gaze at her face results in her being seen entirely as a sexual object: "The male person gaze creates the possibility for treating a woman's body, body parts, or sexual functions as separated out from her person or as if they are capable of representing her" (p. 2). In other words, when a man'south gaze is directed at a woman's body, he will treat her as someone who exists entirely for his use and pleasance. Previous research attempting to constitute whether this is true, every bit Bareket et al. suggest, was limited by the fact that the findings depended on self-report, in which men indicated how much they stare at women in objectifying ways. Instead, it is necessary to use a mensurate of objectification that is non discipline to the distortion of self-report, in which people tend to deny engaging in socially undesirable beliefs.
The obvious solution to the problem of self-report is to watch the actual gazes of experimental participants with heart tracking. The researcher can use this applied science to measure exactly where men's eyes wander when they await at female targets. The Israeli researchers took reward of this technology while as well asking their male participants to complete measures of objectifying attitudes. The 61 male participants, nigh of whom were higher students, and all of whom were Jewish, ranged in age from nearly twenty years erstwhile to over 40. (The average age was 26 years old.) The experimenters placed them in an middle tracking appliance while they viewed 2 sets of stimuli, all of which were photographs of women. In the first prepare, the women had an "ideal" Western torso shape and were wearing white tank tops with jeans or gray sweatpants. They all had the same neutral trunk position and facial expression. In the 2d prepare of photographs, the women wore their own clothing, and all were smiling. The male participants thought they were in a written report of impression formation, and the instructions indicated they should provide a quick positive or negative judgment of the women in the photograph.
The questionnaire measure of sexual objectification of women asked participants to country their agreement with items such as: "If a woman is bonny, she doesn't need to have anything interesting to say," "Women are usually flattered when y'all look at them," "I would savor watching a female person stripper," and "Commenting on women'southward physical features is but natural."
The fundamental variables of involvement in the eye-tracking part of the study were "dwell times" of eye movements directed at the face up, chest, and pelvis of the women in the photographs. The researchers measured sexual objectification of the female in the photo by subtracting the time looking at the woman's confront from the time spent looking at her chest or hips. Every bit the authors predicted, the men with higher dwell times on the sexual parts of the women's bodies also had higher scores on the explicit measure out of sexual objectification. The findings, Bareket et al. conclude, support the idea that "men who are likely to gaze at women'south bodies at the expense of their faces also endorse attitudes that justify and normalize the sexual objectification of women" (p. eight).
The Israeli written report's findings propose, and then, why certain people brand you feel uncomfortable. The subtle class of sexism represented by a human's stare is difficult to pin down. Yous might know that something is off but non know exactly what information technology is, and you'll exist fifty-fifty less likely to resist that unwanted gaze. Although this written report examined sexist attitudes, the authors also point out that such implicitly held attitudes nigh a group of people can be involved in other forms of prejudice and discrimination. Peradventure you feel that a person of a different colour skin, ethnicity, or nationality is looking at and judging you, but you lot have no concrete proof that in that location is whatsoever negative intent of attitude beingness directed your way. If you lot're an older person, you may feel that immature people as well look at you in a disquisitional or judgmental way, simply unless they say something, yous can't exist quite sure.
To sum upwards, the reason that some people make you experience uncomfortable may take far less to practise with you than with them. If you can motility on, either physically or mentally, yous'll be able to avoid having that unwanted gaze thwart your own potential for fulfillment.
References
Bareket, O., Shnabel, N., Abeles, D., Gervais, S., & Yuval-Greenberg, S. (2018). Evidence for an association between men's spontaneous objectifying gazing behavior and their endorsement of objectifying attitudes toward women. Sexual practice Roles: A Journal of Research. doi:10.1007/s11199-018-0983-8.
Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201811/why-some-people-just-make-you-feel-uncomfortable
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