“Protect Our Women…From the Immigrants!?”: The Association Between Sexism, Xenophobia, and the Perception of Sexual Street Harassment From In-Group Versus Out-Group Men

Catcalling as a form of sexual street harassment has been shown to seriously affect women’s perception of safety and well-being. The present study aimed to investigate whether inter-group attitudes and perceived origin of the catcalling person influence the way people perceive such behavior. We presented 1,246 participants vignettes of catcalling being performed by in-group versus out-group members and let them rate these vignettes with respect to the harassment perceived. Participants furthermore provided self-report data on ambivalent sexism and xenophobia. The results show negative associations of sexism and xenophobia with perceived reprehensibility of catcalling behavior and negative feelings toward the catcallers. Out-group catcallers were evaluated more negatively. Xenophobic and hostile sexist attitudes led to a greater difference in the negative evaluation of in-group versus out-group perpetrators. Partial correlations revealed that the overall evaluation is mainly driven by hostile sexism, whereas the differential evaluation of in-group versus out-group perpetrators mainly relied on xenophobia. The system-justifying and conservative core of inter-group attitudes seems to lead to a heightened tolerance of catcalling behavior. Importantly, out-group perpetrators are evaluated more negatively for norm violating behavior indicating double standards in the view on sexual harassment. This bears implications for the importance of awareness about stereotypes within the context of intervention programs to reduce gendered violence.