Computer-assisted self-interviews were completed with a random sample of 163 unmarried Caucasian and African American men in a large metropolitan area. Almost a quarter (24.5%) of these men acknowledged committing an act since the age of 14 that met standard legal definitions of attempted or completed rape; an additional 39% had committed another type of sexual assault involving forced sexual contact or verbal coercion. An expanded version of the Malamuth et al.[1991] confluence model was examined using path analysis. The number of sexual assaults perpetrated by participants was associated with the direct or indirect effects of childhood sexual abuse, adolescent delinquency, alcohol problems, sexual dominance, positive attitudes about casual sexual relationships, and pressure from peers to engage in sexual relationships. Additionally, empathy buffered the relationship between sexual dominance and perpetration. The pattern of results was highly similar for African American and Caucasian men. The implications of these findings for sexual assault measurement are discussed and suggestions are made for alternative treatment programs.

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.

This article summarizes a symposium organized and cochaired by Maria Testa and presented at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism, in Santa Barbara, California. The symposium explored issues relevant to understanding the function of placebo conditions and to interpreting placebo effects. Cochair Mark Fillmore began with an overview of the use of placebo conditions in alcohol research, focusing on methodological issues. Jeanette Norris and her colleagues conducted a review of studies examining placebo conditions among women. They conclude that expectancy effects are limited to a few domains. Maria Testa and Antonia Abbey presented papers suggesting that placebo manipulations may result in unanticipated compensatory effects in actual or hypothetical social situations. That is, placebo participants may compensate for anticipated cognitive impairment through vigilant attention to situational cues. John Curtin's research suggests that the compensatory strategies of placebo participants appear to involve a sensitization of evaluative control, resulting in improved performance. Kenneth Leonard provided concluding remarks on the meaning of placebo effects and the value of placebo conditions in research. KeywordsAlcohol Drinking; Placebo Effect; Methods THE PLACEBO EFFECT is intimately tied to the concept of expectancy that arose out of the need to specify an internal (i.e., cognitive) representation of the learning experience (Bolles, 1972;Tolman, 1932). When an association between 2 events is learned, the first event is said to elicit an expectancy of the second event. Moreover, once learned, the expectancy itself can elicit the associated outcome, and thus expectancies are considered to be an important determinant of behavior (Kirsch, 1999).The placebo has a long history as a control-comparison condition in studies of drug effects on behavior (Kirsch, 1999). Early medical reports of the beneficial effects of placebos led to considerable interest beyond their use as control conditions. In particular, the placebo effect

The confluence model of sexual assault provides a useful theoretical integration of factors that influence men's likelihood of committing sexual assault (Malamuth, Sockloskie, Koss, & Tanaka, 1991). This study replicates and extends the confluence model by including alcohol at multiple levels. Participants' usual alcohol consumption and alcohol consumption in sexual situations were included as predictor variables. The number of sexually aggressive acts that participants committed after consuming alcohol and the number of sexually aggressive acts participants committed when sober were separately calculated so that the predictors of each could be distinguished. Participants were 356 men who completed a survey that included measures that assessed the key components of the confluence model. Results of path analyses indicated that the expanded model fit the data well, with both general and situational measures of alcohol use predicting frequency of sexual assault when drinking alcohol. These findings highlight the importance of developing universal and targeted prevention programs for young men.

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.Keywords sexual assault; perpetration; etiology; community Only a handful of researchers have examined the predictors of sexual assault perpetration in community samples. Calhoun, Bernat, Clum, and Frame (1997) asked 65 young male residents of a Southern rural community who had been in an earlier study to complete their survey. Delinquency, hostility toward women, anger, dating frequency, alcohol consumption on dates, and sexual promiscuity were included as potential predictors of sexual assault perpetration. Hostility toward women and delinquency were the only two variables that significantly correlated with perpetration, and delinquency was the only significant predictor Permissions:http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Please address correspondence regarding this article to Antonia Abbey, Department of Psychology, Wayne State University, 5057 Woodward, 7th floor, Detroit, MI, 48202; aabbey@wayne.edu. HHS Public Access Author Manuscript Author ManuscriptAuthor ManuscriptAuthor Manuscript in multiple regression analyses. Senn, Desmarais, Verberg, and Wood (2000) conducted a mail survey with 195 male residents of a small Canadian city. Childhood abuse, adolescent peer pressure, adolescent promiscuity, hostility toward women, rape myth acceptance, discomfort expressing emotions with women, age, and social desirability were included as predictors in logistic regression analyses to distinguish between perpetrators and nonperpetrators. Adolescent promiscuity and discomfort expressing emotions with women were the only significant predictors. Knight and Sims-Knight (2003) surveyed 168 men who were members of a civic and social club in Philadelphia. In structural equation analyses, juvenile delinquency and aggressive sexual fantasies had significant direct effects on sexual assault perpetration.In contrast to the limited number of community surveys, there are numerous surveys of male college students who report that they have forced some type of unwanted sex on a woman. As compared to nonperpetrators, college student perpetrators have lower empathy, lower ad...

Although many researchers have documented men's tendency to misperceive women's friendliness as a sign of sexual interest, few have examined individual differences in men's 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 Tanaka's (1991) Confluence model to predict frequency of misperception of women's 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 men's frequency of misperception. Furthermore, the more risk factors men possessed, the more times they misperceived women's sexual intentions. Suggestions are made for theory development and future research incorporating situational as well as personality measures in longitudinal studies.Keywords sexual perception; misperception of sexual intent; sexual assault; Confluence model; alcohol Both women and men frequently report that their sexual intentions have been misperceived by someone of the opposite sex, although substantially more women than men report that their level of sexual interest was overperceived (Abbey, 1987;Haselton, 2003;Koss & Oros, 1982). For example, Koss and Oros (1982) found that 70% of the female and 53% of the male college students in their survey reported that the level of sexual intimacy they desired from a member of the opposite sex had been misperceived at least once. Similarly, Abbey (1987, Study 1) found that 72% of college women and 60% of college men reported that Correspondence regarding this manuscript should be sent to Angela J. Jacques-Tiura, Department of Psychology, Wayne State University, 5057 Woodward, Detroit, MI 48202; ajacques@wayne.edu. HHS Public Access Author Manuscript Author ManuscriptAuthor ManuscriptAuthor Manuscript someone of the opposite sex had misperceived their friendliness as a sexual come-on. Among those students who had been misperceived, the average number of misperceptions was 4.8. These findings are typically explained in terms of the ambiguous meaning of many nonverbal and verbal cues (P. A. Anderson, 1985;Fichten, Tagalakis, Judd, Wright, & Amsel, 1992;Kowalski, 1993). People may be signaling sexual interest when they smile, stand close, give a compliment, or pat someone of the opposite sex on the arm; however, they also may be signaling friendship or attention. The multiple meanings associated with flirtatious cues contribute to frequent misunderstandings, particularly early in an interaction (Henningsen, 2004;Koeppel, Montagne-Miller, O'Hair, & Cody, 1993).Although most misperceptions of sexual intent are quickly resolved, they have been linked to men's perpetration of sexual assault and sexual harassment (Abbey, 1987;Abbey, McAuslan, & Ross, 1998;Stockdale, 1993). The primary purpose of this article is to determine the extent to which the Confluence model (Malamuth, Sockloskie, Koss, & Tanaka, 1991), which has been used to predict colle...

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; M age = 25.02) were randomly assigned to a control, placebo, low dose (target blood alcohol level = .04), or high dose (target blood alcohol level = .08) beverage 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 women's sexual decision making and point to the importance of examining it as a multi-stage process. KeywordsAlcohol Consumption; Sensation Seeking; Sexual Arousal; Risky Sex; Condom NegotiationThe proportion of AIDS cases in the US composed of women has increased dramatically over the last two decades, rising from 8% of the total in 1985 to 27% in 2005. Approximately 80% of new HIV cases in women are attributable to heterosexual transmission (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2008). Because consistent use of the male condom is still the most effective preventive strategy, intervention efforts have focused on ways to increase its use. However, for a woman to "use" a male condom, she must be able to insist on using one, and ultimately refuse to have sex if her male partner refuses to use one.Sexual decision making is a multi-stage process, involving a series of interactions with and responses to one's partner. When a woman wants to use a condom with a man, she may engage in a series of strategies, such as discouraging him from continuing to pursue sex if one is not available and insisting on using one before ultimately deciding whether or not to have unprotected sex. Contributing to the complexities of these interactions is likely to be concurrent Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jeanette Norris, Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute, University of Washington, 1107 NE 45th St., Suite 120, Seattle, WA 98105. Email: norris@u.washington.edu. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptPsychol Addict Behav. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 March 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript sexual arousal. To obtain a full understanding of how sexual decisions are made, it is necessary to study both situational and predispositional influences on this process. Alcohol consumption and sensation seeking are two such influences that have jointly been associated with risky sexual behavior (Hendershot, Stoner, George, & Norris, 2007;Kalichman & Cain, 2004;Kalichman, Simbayi, Jooste, Cain, & Cherry, 2006). However, little research has addressed the ne...

Past sexual victimization has been identified as a predictor of women's sexual risk-taking. In order to develop effective prevention and treatment programs, research is needed that examines perpetrators' characteristics. Thus, the goal of this study was to examine predictors of men's willingness to use coercive strategies to obtain sex without a condom. Male college students (n = 72) completed a survey that assessed past sexual assault perpetration, hostility, past misperception of women's sexual cues, usual alcohol consumption, and usual condom use. One month later, they participated in an alcohol administration study and watched a video about a couple in a consensual sexual situation. Participants were asked to evaluate how justified they would be in using a variety of coercive strategies to make the woman have unprotected sex. In hierarchical multiple regression analyses, there was a significant main effect of past perpetration such that men who had previously committed sexual assault felt more justified using coercive strategies to obtain unprotected sex than did nonperpetrators. Acute alcohol consumption did not have a main effect; however, it interacted with hostility and misperception. Among participants who consumed alcohol prior to watching the video, the greater their preexisting hostility, the more justified they felt in using coercion. Similarly, the more frequently drinkers had misperceived women's sexual intentions in the past, the more justified they felt in using coercion. Based on these findings, several specific suggestions are made for prevention and treatment programs, including targeted communication skills and normative feedback interventions.