Military men who face sexual harassment may experience more distress and work performance problems than military women who face the same problem, new research shows.
"Men may be less likely to think they would be sexually harassed. So it is a particularly strong violation of their expectations that could result in stronger negative reactions," stressed lead author Isis H. Settles from Michigan State University.
Another possibility is that men feel less able to cope with their sexual harassment than women who know it is a possibility and, therefore, are perhaps more emotionally prepared, he explained.
Researchers examined data from a 2002 US Department of Defense survey of 17,874 service members, of whom 9,098 were men.
A total of 6,304 male and female soldiers reported experiencing sexual harassment while on duty in the past year.
Of those, 28 percent were men, 64.5 percent were white, 21.5 percent were African-American and 14 percent were Hispanic.
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A total of 52 percent of military women said they had been sexually harassed compared with 19 percent of military men.
"The surprise was that men were more upset and debilitated after experiencing frightening sexual harassment than women," Settles noted.
Male soldiers reported that men were the perpetrators 52 percent of the time, while the other incidents involved both a man and a woman or a woman alone.
For women, 86 percent of the harassment was by men while the remaining incidents involved both men and women or only a woman.
A total of 46 percent of men and 68 percent of women were sexually harassed by someone of higher rank, the study reported.
Since the military is male-dominated, more research is needed to determine whether the same results occur for men outside of a military context, the authors said in the study published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.