Peer modeling and college men's sexually impositional behavior in the laboratory

Journal of Sex Research, Nov, 2002 by Damon Mitchell, D.J. Angelone, Richard Hirschman, Roy S. Lilly, Gordon C. Nagayama Hall

In keeping with Hall and Hirschman's (1994) earlier argument, we operationally defined sexual imposition in the laboratory as a male participant showing a sexually aggressive video clip to a female confederate because of the onerous sexual nature of the stimulus and its potentially negative impact on a female viewer. This definition emphasizes the sexual nature of the imposition and its potential for harm to the recipient versus issues of victim nonconsent. Conceptually, this operational definition was believed to provide an analogue for how these elements operate in many forms of sexual imposition involving peer influence. Sexual imposition involving peers (such as a group of men leering, whistling, and shouting sexually offensive comments to a female pedestrian or catcalling in a bar) may involve one or several male perpetrators harming a female victim without explicit consideration or awareness of her nonconsent. That is, by engaging in the behavior, the men take a chance that the woman might be offended by their behavior and perhaps they may also not care if she is offended by their behavior. This type of situation contrasts with forms of sexual aggression that explicitly involve a male perpetrator harming a female victim who he knows does not consent to sexual activity, such as when a man physically forces a woman to have sexual intercourse. Addressing the issue of victim nonconsent is complicated by the fact that even perpetrators who commit forced sexual intercourse may deny an awareness of the victim's nonconsent, and maintain that the victim enjoyed or sought out the sexual activity. In many instances of sexual imposition, the intent of the man is less important than his willingness to engage in behavior that is potentially unpleasant for the female recipient.

In this study, we hypothesized that observation of peer modeling of sexually impositional behavior would influence subsequent participant behavior. Therefore, we predicted that participants exposed to a male confederate who showed the sexually aggressive video clip would be more likely to show the sexually aggressive video clip than would participants exposed to a male confederate who showed a nonaggressive video clip. We also predicted that participants with a history of sexually aggressive behavior outside the laboratory would be more likely to show the sexually aggressive video clip than would participants with no history of sexually aggressive behavior. Finally, we predicted that situational and person variables would interact such that participants with a history of sexually aggressive behavior exposed to a sexually impositional male confederate would be more likely to show the sexually aggressive video clip than would other participants.

METHOD

Participants

Eighty undergraduate men from a large midwestern university participated in the study as one of several options for research credit. We selected participants for the study based on their responses to the Coercive Sexuality Scale (CSS; Rapaport & Burkhart, 1984), administered during a mass testing procedure in which general psychology students also completed measures that did not pertain to sexual or aggressive behavior. The 40 respondents who reported the most extensive history of sexually coercive behavior on the CSS comprised the sexually aggressive group. Participants with a self-reported history of sexual aggression admitted to a variety of physically and verbally coercive behaviors, such as removing a woman's clothing against her will, using verbal threats to obtain sex, and using physical restraint to obtain sex. Participants with a self-reported history of sexual aggression had committed at least two different types of sexually aggressive behavior or one type of sexually aggressive act several times. Forty respondents who reported no history of sexually coercive behavior on the CSS comprised the sexually nonaggressive group. We randomly assigned 20 participants in each of these groups to a neutral condition or disinhibiting condition. The mean age of the participants was 19.4 years (SD = 1.9) and ranged from 18 to 29 years. With respect to ethnic background, 73% identified themselves as Caucasian, 8% as African American, 4% as Asian, and 1% as Latino. Five percent identified themselves as of mixed ethnic background or chose not to respond to the item. The data of 6 participants were omitted from the final analyses because they indicated some knowledge of the experiment's hypotheses on a manipulation check. One participant was unable to complete the study due to equipment malfunctions. These 7 participants were distributed relatively equally by experimental condition and sexual aggression history. There were 73 participants in the final data analyses. Thirty-seven participants were from the sexually aggressive group and 36 were from the sexually nonaggressive group. Thirty-five participants were exposed to the neutral condition and 38 were exposed to the disinhibiting condition.