Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Feeling powerful or possessing power over someone is often shown in the sexual harassment literature as an antecedent. Indeed, power can be construed in a self-focused manner or in a responsibility-focused manner. Tost (2015) theorized that powerholders who construe their power as responsibility should then act for the benefit of others. However, a recent study by Stockdale, Gilmer, and Dinh (2019) found the opposite effect. Specifically, they found that priming responsibility-focused power increased the intention to sexually harass, speculating that priming such powers may have created a “moral license” (Miller & Effron, 2010) to engage in sexual harassment. The purpose of the present study is to extend their findings by examining the role of moral licensing. I hypothesize that participants who are in the responsibility-focused power priming condition will engage in sexual harassment proclivities through a serial mediation of communal feelings and moral licensing (moral crediting and moral credentialing). Results confirm that communal feelings and moral crediting serially mediate the relationship between responsibility-focused power and sexual harassment proclivities. The hypothesized role of moral credentialing was not supported. Findings in this study provides a potential explanation for the paradoxical findings of responsibility-focused power in Stockdale et al. (2019)’s study. This study also emphasizes the importance of understanding responsibility-focused power in sexual harassment indices and the potential the ironic effects of having such power via moral crediting.

This thesis investigates the factors that can sufficiently explain China's policy change on climate change issue. We utilize interest-based theory in environmental politics and constructivism to explore the drivers behind China's climate change policy formulation. The theories are tested by process tracing the historical development of China's policy on climate change. The analysis is further complemented by other explanatory factors based on empirical findings, including domestic policy process and the impact of non-state actors. The study finds out that China's climate change policy has experienced positive changes with growing policy stringency. The result shows that China's climate change policy cannot be sufficiently explained by the interest-based theory, the factor regarding ecological vulnerability can be only partially confirmed. Instead, international norms can provide plausible incentives for policy change through the process of socialization. The final policy outcomes are also connected to the interest of the most influential domestic political actor. The study results help us to better understand the environmental politics in China and provides guidelines to predict China's role in international climate change negotiation after the Conference of Parties in Paris.