Excusing and Justifying Rape Cognitions in Judgments of Sexually Coercive Dating Scenarios

Abstract

According to recent analyses, Bumby’s RAPE scale of rape-supportive cognitions about women and sexual assault comprises two factors. Excusing rape serves to reduce abusers’ culpability for their offending, and ascribing blame to victims, while justifying rape is associated with a sense of sexual entitlement. The distinct effects of these factors on rape judgments have not yet been investigated. We examined whether these belief clusters differentially explained judgments of perpetrator innocence after priming cues related to each of them. We used a cross-sectional design ( N = 217) to test our hypotheses. As predicted, we found that excusing rape cognitions contributed to exaggerated innocence judgments when the victim paid the bill on a first date (potentially indicative of romantic or sexual interest). However, contrary to expectations, there was no evidence that participants justified rape when the perpetrator paid the bill. Implications for conceptualizing the functions of rape-supportive cognitions are discussed.

Development and validation of the Beliefs about Revenge Pornography Questionnaire

“…In addition, seeing the victims of revenge pornography as being responsible for their experiences was associated with greater levels of victim blame and lower rates of perceived criminality and victim harm (irrespective of their previous online posting activity). This is consistent with broader work in the area of sexual offending, where victim blaming and other offense-supportive cognitions are associated with a host of undesirable outcomes, including increased rates of sexual aggression proclivity and more lenient judgements of offense case studies (Bohner et al, 2005;Harper, Franco et al, 2020).…”

“…Our motivation in doing so was rooted in the existing literature either using brief measures of judgements about revenge pornography offending (Bothamley & Tully, 2018;Fido et al, 2019) or not using transparent and systematic measures of scale development (Powell et al, 2019). Given the importance of offense-supportive cognition in contributing to both a proclivity towards and judgements of sexual offending (Bohner et al 2005;Harper, Franco et al, 2020;Hermann, et al, 2012Hermann, et al, , 2018 The systematic validation of the BRPQ identified several predictors of each cluster of beliefs, as well as establishing the measure's predictive validity itself. Endorsing rape myths was a substantial predictor of viewing revenge pornography victims as being responsible for their experiences.…”

“…There is a vast amount of work within the sexual offending literature that examines the role of offense-supportive cognition in predicting a proclivity towards sexual aggression (e.g., Bohner er al., 2005;Bumby, 1996;Hermann et al, 2012;Polaschek & Gannon, 2004; Polaschek & Ward, 2002;Ward, 2000) and judgements of sexual aggression (e.g., Harper, Franco et al, 2020;Süssenbach et al, 2012). At a societal level we refer to widespread offense-supportive beliefs as rape myths.…”

“…These are defined as a complex set of prejudicial, stereotyped, and false beliefs about rape victims, rape perpetrators and the crime of rape (Burt, 1980). Although some aspects of this definition have been queried (see Reece, 2012), such beliefs may commonly serve to place blame on the victim, absolve or excuse the perpetrator of sexual violence, and minimize or justify the crime of rape (Bumby 1996;Burt, 1980;Harper, Franco et al, 2020;Hermann et al, 2012). Common examples of rape myths include that victims 'ask for it' by wearing sexually provocative clothing, that men commonly do not mean to rape (but rather their sexual arousal gets the better of them), that some women report rapes that did not really happen, and that women can manipulate men into behaving in sexually inappropriate ways (McMahon & Farmer, 2011;Polaschek & Gannon, 2004;Polaschek & Ward, 2002).…”

The internalization of social stigma among minor-attracted persons: Implications for treatment

“…Self-perceived risk is a more difficult topic to assess indirectly. With the launch of new technologies allowing the embedding of indirect measures to online surveys (e.g., the iatgen applet extension, which facilitates the use of the implicit association test in surveys created using Qualtrics; Carpenter et al, in press), it might be possible to examine implicit levels of acceptance of child-adult sexual relationships in a manner similar to how implicit judgements of rape cases have been examined (e.g., Harper, Franco, & Wills, 2019). Another more straightforward alternative would be to use Gannon and O'Connor's (2011) Interest in Child Molestation scale, which explicitly asks respondents to rate (1) how aroused they might be if they were to put themselves in the position of a fictitious child sex offender, (2) whether they would do the same as this fictitious offender, and (3) the extent to which they would enjoy behaving in that manner.…”