Creepiness in relation to harassment in the workplace

Creepiness is an emotion experienced when a person detects an indirect or ambiguous threat. Previous studies have predominantly investigated creepiness in relation to technological advances, which primarily occurs when the technology's use conflicts with acceptable social norms in society. Interpersonal creepiness has not been examined to the same extent, and there has been frequent use of "creeps" to refer to harassers both inside and outside of the workplace. Feelings of creepiness can also be taken as evidence of a hostile work environment, which also constitutes harassment.

This thesis explores how creepiness is related to harassment in the workplace across nine quantitative studies (N = 1520), and one semi-structured interview study (N = 20). The results find clear empirical evidence that creepiness is related to harassment, and also provide support for the idea that creepiness is a form of harassment in itself.

Studies 1 and 2 present evidence that four different kinds of harassment are considered creepy, and that creepiness helped rather than hindered identification of said harassment. These findings were supported by interviews involving people's real-life experiences with harassment and creepiness in the workplace, including the other emotions they experienced and how they behaved in those situations.

Studies 3 - 6 utilised appraisal theory to investigate how interpretations of creepiness differed depending on the directness of the harassment, and whether the gender and sexual or nonsexual behaviour of the harasser had an impact. Studies 3 and 4 discovered that direct threats evoked less creepiness than indirect threats, and that both sexual and non-sexual harassing behaviours inspired creepiness. Male harassers were also appraised as creepier than female harassers. Studies 5 and 6 showed that creepiness was identified as creating a hostile work environment and thus was seen as constituting harassment in itself and demonstrated a difference between feelings and judgements of creepiness.

Studies 7 - 9 explored how incidental creepiness influenced perceptions of harassment using an association framework and tested whether punishment of harassment changed depending on whether the harasser conformed to stereotypes of creepiness. The results indicated that creepiness was evaluated separately from general negativity, and that non-harassment-relevant cues to creepiness increased interpretations of a character as a harasser and of said character's behaviour as harassment. Furthermore, stereotypically creepy harassers received harsher punishments than non-creepy harassers even if their behaviour was identical.

Overall, this thesis adds to the literature surrounding creepiness by examining it in the context of interpersonal interactions, and these studies were the first to investigate creepiness in relation to harassment in the workplace. The findings support the idea that creepiness is an emotion that responds to ambiguous threats, can be triggered by instances of workplace harassment, and does not impair or undermine identification of harassment. Further, there is evidence that creepiness is a form of harassment, not just elicited by it. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and applied implications, limitations, and future avenues for research.