Michele R. Parkhill

The Effects of Frame of Reference on Responses to Questions About Sexual Assault Victimization and Perpetration

Self-reports of sexual assault are affected by a variety of factors including the number of questions, question phrasing, and context. Participants (307 women, 166 men) were randomly assigned to one of two forms of a questionnaire. One form had the tactics used to obtain forced sex as the initial frame of reference, whereas the other form had the type of sex that was forced as the initial frame of reference. Seventy-five percent of the women who received the tactics-first version reported that they had at least one victimization experience since the age of 14, as compared to 62% of the women who received the type-of-sex-first version. Sixty-nine percent of the men who received the tactics-first version reported that they had at least one perpetration experience since the age of 14, as compared to 36% of the men who received the type-of-sex-first version. These findings have implications for how questionnaires should be designed to maximize reporting of sexual assault incidents.

Why Do Some Men Misperceive Women's Sexual Intentions More Frequently Than Others Do? An Application of the Confluence Model

Although many researchers have documented mens tendency to misperceive womens friendliness as a sign of sexual interest, few have examined individual differences in mens attitudes and past experiences that might predict their likelihood of making these types of misjudgments. We applied an expanded version of Malamuth, Sockloskie, Koss, and Tanakas (1991) Confluence model to predict frequency of misperception of womens sexual intent with a sample of 356 male college students. Using structural equation modeling, hostile masculinity, impersonal sex, and drinking in dating and sexual situations predicted mens frequency of misperception. Furthermore, the more risk factors men possessed, the more times they misperceived womens sexual intentions. Suggestions are made for theory development and future research incorporating situational as well as personality measures in longitudinal studies.

A comparison of men who committed different types of sexual assault in a community sample

This study extends past research by examining predictors of different types of sexual assault perpetration in a community sample. Computer-assisted self-interviews were conducted with a representative sample of 163 men in one large urban community. As hypothesized, many variables that are significant predictors of sexual assault perpetration in college student samples were also significant predictors in this sample, including empathy, adult attachment, attitudes about casual sex, sexual dominance, alcohol consumption in sexual situations, and peer approval of forced sex. For most measures, the strongest differences were between nonassaulters and men who committed acts that met standard legal definitions of rape. Men who committed forced sexual contact and verbal coercion tended to have scores that fell in between those of the other two groups. The implications of these findings are discussed for community-based sexual assault prevention programs.

Influences of sexual sensation seeking, alcohol consumption, and sexual arousal on women's behavioral intentions related to having unprotected sex.

This experimental study examined effects of alcohol consumption and sexual sensation seeking on unprotected sex intentions, taking into account sexual arousal, indirectly discouraging sex, and condom insistence. Women (N = 173; mean age = 25.02) were randomly assigned to a control, placebo, low-dose beverage (target blood alcohol level = .04), or high- dose beverage (target blood alcohol level = .08) condition. Participants projected themselves into a hypothetical sexual interaction with a man in which no condom was available. Structural equation modeling demonstrated that both sexual sensation seeking and alcohol dose directly increased sexual arousal early in the interaction, but later sexual arousal indirectly increased unprotected sex intentions by decreasing endorsement of indirect discouragement and, in turn, condom insistence. These findings help to clarify the role of alcohol consumption and sensation seeking in womens sexual decision making and point to the importance of examining it as a multistage process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PERCEPTIONS OF SEXUAL INTENT: A QUALITATIVE REVIEW AND INTEGRATION

Men appear to interpret peoples behaviors more sexually than do women. This finding, which has been replicated in scores of studies using a variety of methodological approaches, has been linked to important social concerns, including sexual assault and sexual harassment. This article provides a critical review of the published literature on gender differences in sexual intent perception, using selective examples to illustrate and summarize the fields major constructs, methodologies, and empirical findings. Theoretical explanations for gender differences in sexual intent perceptions are reviewed. Finally, we highlight the fields remaining issues and make several recommendations for future research directions.

Do women seek humorousness in men because it signals intelligence? A cross-cultural test

Abstract Miller has suggested that people seek humorousness in a mate because humor connotes intelligence, which would be valuable in a spouse. Since males tend to be the competing sex, men have been more strongly selected to be humorous. To test this notion, we explored the role of humor in marriage cross-culturally, in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Turkey, and Russia. In the first four societies, husbands were perceived to make wives laugh more than the reverse, but wives were funnier in Russia. Spousal humorousness was associated with marital satisfaction in all cultures, especially the wifes satisfaction. Spousal humorousness was less consistently related to spousal intelligence than to some alternative possibilities: spousal kindness, dependability, and understanding. Furthermore, the relationship between these four variables and marital satisfaction was mediated by spousal humorousness. Humor is gratifying in other social contexts as well. Humorists may gain social credit by providing amusement, and may also use humor to gauge anothers mood and to engender liking, perhaps especially in courtship and marriage. Spouses may also take humorousness as a sign of motivation to be amusing, kind, understanding, dependable — as a sign of commitment.

Explicating Alcohol's Role in Acquaintance Sexual Assault: Complementary Perspectives and Convergent Findings

This article summarizes the proceedings of a symposium presented at the 2004 meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism (RSA) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. There were four presentations and a discussant. The symposium was co-chaired by Tina Zawacki and Jeanette Norris. The first presentation was made by Jeanette Norris, who found that alcohol consumption and preexisting alcohol expectancies affected womens hypothetical responses to a vignette depicting acquaintance sexual aggression. The second presentation was made by Joel Martell, who reported that alcohol-induced impairment of executive cognitive functioning mediated the effect of intoxication on mens perceptions of a sexual assault vignette. In the third presentation, Antonia Abbey found that the experiences of women whose sexual assault involved intoxication or force were more negative than were the experiences of women whose sexual assault involved verbal coercion. The fourth presentation was made by Tina Zawacki, who reported that men who perpetrated sexual assault only in adolescence differed from men who continued perpetration into adulthood in terms of their drinking patterns and attitudes toward women. William H. George discussed these findings in terms of their implications for theory development and prevention programming.

Integrating Attachment and Depression in the Confluence Model of Sexual Assault Perpetration

This study sought to extend the confluence model of sexual assault perpetration by examining attachment insecurity and depression as additional predictors of sexual aggression. Male college students (N = 193) completed an online questionnaire assessing confluence model constructs in addition to attachment and history of depression. Overall, the model fit the data well, χ2(11, 193) = 19.43, p = ns; root mean square error of approximation = .063; comparative fit index = .94. Attachment and depression demonstrated both direct and indirect relationships with perpetration severity. The results contribute to elucidating the process by which certain men become susceptible to perpetrating sexual assault. Implications are discussed.

The role of alcohol use during sexual situations in the relationship between sexual revictimization and women's intentions to engage in unprotected sex

Research has demonstrated relationships among childhood sexual abuse, adult sexual assault, and sexual risk taking. This study proposes that one mechanism through which the victimization–sexual risk-taking relationship works is through an increased likelihood of drinking during sexual situations. Using path analysis, this study explores this hypothesis in a sample of 230 women. The model illustrates that women with a history of child and adult sexual victimization reported greater intentions to engage in unprotected sex and that this relationship is in part accounted for by an increased likelihood of drinking in sexual situations. The results suggest that sexual risk reduction programs and sexual assault treatment programs should educate women about the alcohol-involved sexual risk taking that often follows sexual assault victimization.

College Women’s Perceptions of and Inclination to Use Campus Sexual Assault Resources Comparing the Views of Students With and Without Sexual Victimization Histories

The purpose of this study is to explore whether college women’s perceptions of and inclination to use campus sexual assault resources vary as a function of their sexual victimization histories. First, using data from the full sample of female undergraduate students selected from the psychology subject pool (N = 247), we performed t-tests to analyze whether perceptions of sexual assault as a problem on campus, knowledge of and confidence in campus sexual assault resources, and likelihood of attending a university sexual assault self-defense course differed for victims and nonvictims. Victims indicated significantly less confidence in campus resources and significantly less interest in attending the self-defense course than nonvictims. Second, using data from a subsample of participants (n = 57) who reported being unlikely to attend the self-defense course, we performed a qualitative analysis of the open-ended responses. Student-reported reasons for not attending the self-defense course were categorized into instrumental barriers such as time and schedule constraints and perceptual barriers such as belief that the self-defense course was unnecessary, with similar response patterns emerging for victims and nonvictims. The results underscore the need for colleges and universities to improve sexual assault service provision for students, especially women with sexual victimization histories.