Sexually Aggressive Men's Responses to a Date Rape Analogue: Alcohol as a Disinhibiting Cue

Journal of Sex Research, Nov, 1998 by Jeffrey A. Bernat, Karen S. Calhoun, Stephanie Stolp

The purpose of the present study was to extend research on how college men judge sexual advances in a progressively non-consensual audio tape date rape analogue. Using the methodology employed by Bernat et. al (in press), dispositional and situational factors were examined, with self-identified sexually aggressive and nonaggressive college men sampled and the situational dating context manipulated to include both vignette character alcohol consumption and no alcohol conditions. Based on previous research (e.g., Bernat et al., in press), we hypothesized that the sexually aggressive group would take significantly longer to stop the date rape than the nonaggressive group, indicating their acceptance of a higher level of sexual aggression. Furthermore, we hypothesized that men who read that the male and female characters had consumed alcohol before their date would take significantly longer to stop sexual advances than men who did not receive this permissive situational cue. Consistent with a multivariate perspective, on-line judgments were anticipated to be conjointly influenced by situational and dispositional factors. Thus, we hypothesized that the sexually aggressive group receiving the alcohol cue manipulation would exhibit the longest latencies, allowing the date rape to continue significantly longer than all other groups.

Additionally, this study examined whether sexually aggressive men processed information according to a suspicious schema. Consistent with the research of Malamuth and Brown (1994), we predicted that sexually aggressive men would rate the woman's communication more suspiciously after listening to the date rape scenario. Specifically, we hypothesized that relatively more aggressive men would rate the woman as less honest in expressing her true feelings about wanting to have sex, resulting in overestimations in judgments of how much she really wanted to have sex. Additionally, we anticipated that relatively more aggressive men would rate the woman's disingenuous behavior as typical of the way most women act in a similar situation (i.e., it is typical of women to be dishonest about their intentions to have sex). Finally, we hypothesized that the magnitude of these relationships would be stronger given a more permissive situational context in which the characters had consumed alcohol.

METHOD

Screening of Sexual Aggression

Sexually aggressive behavior was assessed by two self-report measures, the Sexual Experiences Survey (SES; Koss et al., 1987) and the Aggressive Sexual Behavior Inventory (ASBI; Mosher and Anderson, 1986). The SES is a 10-item self-report scale that assesses a continuum of sexual aggression, including the perpetration of unwanted sexual activity or sexual intercourse against a woman by means of verbal arguments and psychological pressure, the misuse of a position of authority, the use of alcohol and drugs, threats of force, or actual physical force. An example of an item is "I have had sexual intercourse with a woman when she did not want to by using some degree of physical force (e.g., twisting her arm, holding her down, etc.)." The frequency of each behavior is assessed since the age of 14 on a 6-point Likert scale (0 if the participant never committed the act, 1 if only once and so forth, up to a maximum of 5 if the participant committed the act 5 or more times). Individual item frequencies are summed to form a composite index of sexual aggression. Koss and Gidycz (1985) have presented data supporting the reliability and validity of this scale.