Approximately half of all sexual assaults are associated with either the perpetrator's alcohol consumption, the victim's alcohol consumption, or both. Although the emphasis of this review is on alcohol-involved sexual assaults, their unique aspects can only be evaluated by comparing them to other types of sexual assault. Theoretical perspectives on sexual assault that focus on characteristics of the perpetrator, the victim, and the situation are described. A number of personality traits, attitudes, and past experiences have been systematically linked to sexual assault perpetration, including beliefs about alcohol and heavy drinking. In contrast, only a few experiences have been significantly related to sexual assault victimization, including childhood sexual abuse and heavy drinking. There is support for both psychological and pharmacological mechanisms linking alcohol and sexual assault. Beliefs about alcohol's effects reinforce stereotypes about gender roles and can exacerbate their influence on perpetrators' actions. Alcohol's effects on cognitive and motor skills also contribute to sexual assault through their effects on perpetrators' and victims' ability to process and react to each other's verbal and nonverbal behavior. Limitations with existing research and methodological challenges associated with conducting research on this topic are described. Suggestions are made for future research which can inform prevention and treatment programs.

Past research demonstrates that sexual assault perpetration is caused by multiple factors including attitudes, early experiences, and situational factors. In this study, 343 college men described either a sexual assault they had committed or their worst date. Discriminant function analysis indicated that attitudes about gender roles and alcohol, number of consensual sex partners, how well the man knew the woman, how isolated the setting was, alcohol consumption during the event, the man's misperception of the woman's cues during the event, and prior consensual sexual activity between the man and the woman discriminated between sexual assaults and worst dates. Additionally, tactics used to obtain sex, self attributions, the perceived seriousness of the assault, and the extent to which it disrupted relationships with others significantly discriminated between men who committed forced sexual contact, sexual coercion, and rape. These results demonstrate the importance of considering both individual characteristics and situational factors in theories and prevention activities.Sexual assault is a complex phenomenon, caused by multiple factors both across and within perpetrators. Depending on the definitions and measures used, studies of college men have found that 25% to 57% acknowledged committing sexual assault, with 7% to 15% describing an act that met standard legal definitions of rape (Abbey, McAuslan, & Ross, 1998;Koss, Gidycz, & Wisniewski, 1987;Muehlenhard & Linton, 1987). The study described in this article had three goals. The first goal was to distinguish between college men who had and had not committed sexual assault using a number of attitudinal, experiential, and situational variables. The second goal was to determine if men who had committed different types of sexual assault varied in their attributions and outcomes. The third goal was to highlight different ways in which alcohol contributed to sexual assault, HHS Public Access Author Manuscript Author ManuscriptAuthor ManuscriptAuthor Manuscript including attitudes about alcohol that facilitate sexual assault, past experiences with alcohol in sexual situations, and alcohol consumption during the assault. Although sexual assault research has addressed each of these goals (Koss, Leonard, Beezley, & Oros, 1985;Malamuth, Linz, Heavey, Barnes, & Acker, 1995;Muehlenhard & Linton, 1987), previous studies have not simultaneously examined them with a large group of perpetrators. The relevant literature is summarized below and then the study's hypotheses are described. Attitudes About Gender Roles and AlcoholOne explanation for why sexual assault is so common focuses on societally sanctioned gender role beliefs that justify forced sex. Since the 1970s, feminist writers have described how traditional attitudes about women, dating, and sexual behavior contribute to sexual assault. In Western culture, sex is frequently described in terms of conquest and as a "battle between the sexes" in which eager men seduce reluctant women (Brownmiller, 1975;Clark, Sha...

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.

Approximately 50% of sexual assaults involve alcohol. Researchers have documented situational characteristics that distinguish between sexual assaults that do and do not involve alcohol, but little attention has been paid to differences between the perpetrators of these two types of assault. In this study, discriminant function analysis was used to distinguish between college men (N = 356) who reported perpetrating sexual assault that involved alcohol, sexual assault that did not involve alcohol, or no sexual assault. Predictors of sexual assault perpetration that have been documented in past research differentiated nonperpetrators from both types of perpetrators. Perpetrators of sexual assaults that involved alcohol were in most ways similar to perpetrators of sexual assaults that did not, although they did differ on impulsivity, alcohol consumption in sexual situations, and beliefs about alcohol. These findings suggest mechanisms through which alcohol is involved in sexual assault that are relevant to theory and prevention.

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

Objective-This study examines hypotheses about alcohol's effects on sexual judgments based on both alcohol and misperception theories. It was hypothesized that gender, alcohol consumption and alcohol expectancy set would influence perceptions of sexuality. Method-Participants were unacquainted women and men (88 dyads) who interacted for 15 minutes within the context of the balanced placebo design. After the conversation ended, participants answered questions about their behavior and their partners' behavior. Conversations were videotaped and coded by trained raters. Results-Men perceived their female partner and themselves as behaving more sexually than women perceived their male partner and themselves. When alcohol was consumed, both women and men were perceived as behaving more sexually and in a more disinhibited manner than when alcohol was not consumed. Ratings made by members of white and black dyads were largely comparable. Trained observers coded participants' use of active attention and dating availability cues. Both types of cues interacted with alcohol consumption such that intoxicated participants exaggerated the meaning of strong (dating availability) cues and ignored the meaning of ambiguous (active attention) cues when making sexual judgments. Conclusions-Supporting past research on gender differences in perceptions of sexuality, men were more sexually attracted to their opposite-sex partner than women were. Both women's and men's sexual judgments were influenced by alcohol consumption but not by alcohol expectancy set. Intoxicated participants' responses to their partners' behavioral cues supported cognitive impairment models of alcohol's effects. The implications of these findings for theories about alcohol's effects on sexuality and for prevention programming are discussed.

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...

This study was designed to validate the Alcohol Expectancies Regarding Sex, Aggression, and Sexual Vulnerability Questionnaire. This instrument includes alcohol expectancies in 4 domains (aggression, sexual affect, sexual drive, and vulnerability to sexual coercion) for 3 targets (self, women, and men). Confirmatory factor analyses with 715 undergraduates supported the hypothesized factor structure for the entire sample, as well as for gender and ethnic subgroups. Each of the subscales had high internal consistency reliability, moderate test-retest reliability, and good discriminant validity. Multivariate analyses of variance supported the hypothesis that participants' alcohol expectancies for other people conformed to gender role stereotypes. Participants saw themselves as being less influenced by alcohol than were others. Implications for sexual assault prevention programs are discussed.Sexual assault occurs at alarmingly high rates in the United States. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (1995) has estimated that one rape is committed every 5 min. More than half of American college women have been sexually assaulted by someone they know, and at least half of all sexual assaults involve alcohol consumption by the perpetrator, the victim, or both (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1997; Koss, Gidycz, & Wisniewski, 1987). Explanations for the relationship between alcohol and sexual assault focus on a number of possible pathways, including alcohol expectancies (Abbey, Ross, McDuffie, & McAuslan, 1996). This article