Sex Roles, Vol. 49, Nos. 3/4, August 2003 ( C  2003) Individual Differences in Sensitivity to Disempowering Acts: A Comparison of Gender and Identity-Based Explanations for Perceived Offensiveness Angela M. Young, 1,3 Charles M. Vance, 2 and Ellen A. Ensher 2 Policy-makers, courts, employers, and individuals must understand perceptual differences among individuals when managing workplace behaviors. Offensive acts that lead to employee disempowerment require particular attention as these behaviors are related to several negative organizational consequences. Women tend to be more sensitive to offensive behavior, but it is unknown whether gender or other factors explain this higher sensitivity. In this study, sensitiv- ity to disempowering acts was assessed by measuring perceived offensiveness reported by male and female observers of videotaped segments of highly confrontive verbal exchanges. Com- peting hypotheses tested gender and identification with the target of disempowering acts as the underlying reason for women’s higher sensitivity. Findings indicated that women reported higher perceived offensiveness regardless of the gender of the target of disempowerment. KEY WORDS: disempowerment; offensiveness; gender. Every employer must deal with problem behav- iors in the workplace that range from subtle oc- currences of hostility or incivility to obvious acts of harassment (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). Nega- tive consequences of mismanaging or ignoring such problem behaviors range from mild dissent and low- ered job involvement (Laband & Lentz, 1998) to costly lawsuits (Livingston, 1982) and high turnover (Dworkin, 1993). When hostile or unproductive ex- changes occur, regardless of how subtle, negative emotions can permeate the organization and ad- versely affect entire groups of employees, not just the few directly involved in a hostile exchange (Danna & Griffin, 1999; Frost & Robinson, 1999; Glomb, Richman, Hulin, & Drasgow, 1997). 1 Department of Management, College of Business and Economics, California State University, Los Angeles, California. 2 College of Business Administration, Loyola Marymount Univer- sity, Los Angeles, California. 3 To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of Management, College of Business and Economics, California State University, Los Angeles, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles, California 90032-8126; e-mail: amyoung4@juno.com. The well-known construct of empowerment has been studied in organizational settings (Spreitzer, 1995), and recently an obverse construct, disempow- erment, has been introduced (Eylon & Bamberger, 2000; Vance, Ensher, & Hendricks, 2000). Disempow- erment is any form of diminished employee perfor- mance or productivity that results from some inter- fering force or influence. One particular source of this interference can be in the form of disempowering be- havior enacted by someone in the workplace (e.g., supervisor, colleague, customer, subordinate). In this article, we define disempowering acts as any inten- tional or unintentional, verbal or nonverbal behavior expressed in the workplace that can be interpreted by the disempowered employee as hostile, offensive, intimidating, demeaning, or threatening (Vance et al., 2000; Young, Vance, & Ensher, 2002). The focus of this study is upon disempowering acts that may be directed toward a target individual or group, and that upon per- ception, result in a negative affect response (i.e., dis- empowerment experience) and, ultimately, interfere with the target’s work performance and productiv- ity. The disempowerment experience may result from being the direct recipient or indirect recipient (e.g., 163 0360-0025/03/0800-0163/0 C  2003 Plenum Publishing Corporation