Predictors of Street Harassment Attitudes in British and ItalianMen: Empathy and Social Dominance

This data was collected from two studies, one in Italy and one in Britain. Participants had the option to complete the online questionnaires in English or Italian. It contains measures of cognitive empathy, social dominance orientation (SDO) and tolerance for street harassment. The latter was measured before and after viewing a video of a female experiencing street harassment by males. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0AThe cognitive empathy scale was used to ascertain participants’ understanding of the women’s emotional responses. This scale is a 10-item self-reported questionnaire containing a 10-point Likert response scale, ranging from 1 (not at all) to 10 (very much). This is an adaptation of Fernandez and Marshall’s (2003) Rapist Empathy Scale, which measures people’s understanding that rape causes negative consequences for the victim. While Fernandez and Marshall (2003) used a vignette, these questions referred to the video watched during the survey. The common stem of the items was: “How much do you think the woman in the video was feeling”. Each item concluded with one of the following: “complimented, offended, proud, ashamed, self-confident, guilty, pleased, afraid, angry, and safe”. Responses to positive words were reverse-coded. Higher scores indicated increased cognitive empathy, with the assumption that street harassment is experienced as a negative experience. Cronbach’s alpha was .81 for the cognitive empathy scale across both U.K. and Italian samples, indicating high internal consistency and reliability.The SDO-7 scale (Aiello et al., 2019; Ho et al., 2015) is an adaptation of the original version by Pratto et al. (1994), an established and reliable scale predicting an individual’s preference for social group hierarchies and inequality. We used the more extended version containing 16 items with a 7-point Likert response scale, ranging from 1 (“strongly oppose”) to 7 (“strongly favour”). Eight items refer to social dominance, and eight refer to anti-inequality. Eight items are reversed coded to reduce acquiescence and extreme response biases. Higher scores indicate higher levels of SDO. Scores on items were summed. Cronbach’s alpha was .91 across both U.K. and Italian samples, indicating high internal consistency and reliability.The Street Harassment Tolerance Scale was modelled after the only attempt in the literature to measure one’s street harassment tolerance (Darnell &amp; Cook, 2009), which in turn was patterned after Goodchilds and Zellman’s (1984) sexual aggression acceptance measure. Darnell and Cook’s (2009) scale was taken due to its good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .94). This is an 11-item questionnaire containing a 5-point Likert response scale, from 1 (not at all acceptable) to 5 (very acceptable). In Darnell and Cook’s (2009) scale, all items begin with a common incipit: “How acceptable do you think it is for a man to make an unsolicited, unreciprocated, and unnecessary comment toward an unknown woman on the street (for example, saying ‘hey baby’ or ‘nice ass’) when”. Then, each item concludes with one of the following situations: the woman is attractive, the woman is dressed in sexy clothing (e.g., short skirt, tight clothes), the woman makes eye contact with him, the woman smiles at him, the woman is alone, the woman is with her friends, the woman is with a man, the woman is with her children, the man is alone, the man is with his friends, and the man is in an unfamiliar neighbourhood. In the present study, questions were slightly modified. The words “unreciprocated and unnecessary” were removed to avoid prompts. The last part was revised into “(for example, whistling and saying ‘hey baby’ or ‘nice ass’)” to capture a wider variety of street harassment behaviours. Higher scores indicated higher tolerance for street harassment. Cronbach’s alpha was .96 for the street harassment tolerance scale across both U.K. and Italian samples, indicating high internal consistency and reliability.<br>