After men are made aware that women are unhappy with receiving unwanted and improper attention from male colleagues, there is the risk that they will be hesitant to socialize with females. This phenomenon followed the distribution of the MIT report on discrimination [MIT 1983, page 19,]. Because informal interaction is an important part of the educational process, this represents a serious loss. For example, it is not uncommon for professors to have meals with their students. It would be a shame if they failed to invite their female students, out of fear of being misunderstood.
Hypersensitivity on both sides occasionally escalates an innocent incident into a colossal misunderstanding. When ``Jane'' was interviewed for a job by ``John'', she found the interview style strange. John spent almost all the time talking about the company and appeared uninterested in hearing Jane say anything about herself. Jane mentioned she thought this style odd. Later, she spoke to a friend ``Mark'' who had worked at the company and was friends with John. He said that John had said that Jane was suspicious at the interview and seemed to think that she was being interviewed purely for quotas --- i.e. that they were not interested in her qualifications. This idea had never crossed Jane's mind --- until that point. After Mark made some further statements about how the company's leaders were opposed to affirmative action, Jane decided it was likely that the reason she had not been asked many questions was because they did not want to hire a female. She felt confident of this conclusion when they offered a job to a male whom she considered to be of equal skill to herself. A few days later, however, they invited her for a plant visit and offered her a job. Thus, both John and Jane incorrectly leapt to conclusions.