Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, G60 Psychological and Brain Sciences Bldg, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA.
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.
Arch Sex Behav. 2022 Aug;51(6):3183-3195. doi: 10.1007/s10508-022-02350-3. Epub 2022 Jul 21.
Acquaintance-initiated sexually aggressive behavior (SAB) is a widespread problem on college campuses, and intervention strategies thus far have not produced sustained reductions in SAB. Peer-related social norms and cognitive processes underlying sexual decision-making have separately been implicated in SAB. The present study integrates this work by examining the effect of perspective (self vs. typical college male referent) on college men's judgments of the justifiability of unwanted sexual advances, determining the cognitive processes underlying men's misperceptions, and evaluating rape-supportive attitudes (RSA) as a correlate of the implicated processes. College men attracted to women (n = 217) completed the Heterosocial Perception Survey-Revised, in which they judged the justifiability of a man's increasingly intimate sexual advances as a woman responds increasingly negatively. Participants completed the Heterosocial Perception Survey-Revised from their own perspective and from the typical college male perspective. Participants also completed questionnaires assessing RSA and demographics. Undergraduate men, and particularly those endorsing more RSA, greatly overestimated how much the typical college male perceives increasingly nonconsensual behavior as justified. Three cognitive processes were strongly implicated in this misperception. When responding from the self-perspective, RSA correlated significantly with all cognitive processes. These findings illustrate the utility of integrating work on social norms and cognitive processing to document the global effect of perspective on average justifiability ratings and the perspective effect on cognitive processes underlying the ratings. Future work should evaluate personalized normative feedback and cognitive-training approaches to target misperceptions of peers' sexual judgments, given the well-established relation between sexual misperception and SAB risk.
熟人发起的性侵犯行为 (SAB) 在大学校园里是一个普遍存在的问题，迄今为止，干预策略并没有持续减少 SAB。与同伴有关的社会规范和性决策背后的认知过程分别与 SAB 有关。本研究通过考察视角（自我与典型大学男性参照）对大学生对非自愿性侵犯合理性的判断的影响，确定男性误解背后的认知过程，并评估支持强奸的态度 (RSA) 作为相关过程的相关因素，整合了这项工作。吸引女性的大学生（n=217）完成了异性社交感知调查修订版，在该调查中，他们根据女性的反应越来越消极来判断男性越来越亲密的性侵犯的合理性。参与者从自己的角度和典型的大学男性的角度完成了异性社交感知调查修订版。参与者还完成了评估 RSA 和人口统计学的问卷。本科男性，尤其是那些支持更多 RSA 的男性，极大地高估了典型的大学男性认为越来越多的非自愿行为是合理的程度。有三个认知过程与这种误解密切相关。当从自我角度做出反应时，RSA 与所有认知过程显著相关。这些发现说明了整合社会规范和认知处理工作的效用，以记录视角对平均合理性评分的整体影响，以及视角对评分背后认知过程的影响。鉴于性误解与 SAB 风险之间的既定关系，未来的工作应该评估个性化规范反馈和认知训练方法，以纠正对同伴性判断的误解。
