On the Relationship Between Automatic Attitudes an

Authors: Laura Widman Michael Olson

Publish Date: 2012/05/23

Volume: 42, Issue: 5, Pages: 813-823

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Abstract

Research and theory suggest rape supportive attitudes are important predictors of sexual assault yet to date rape supportive attitudes have been assessed through selfreport measures that are methodologically and theoretically limited To address these limitations the objectives of the current project were to 1 develop a novel implicit rape attitude assessment that captures automatic attitudes about rape and does not rely on selfreports and 2 examine the association between automatic rape attitudes and sexual assault perpetration We predicted that automatic rape attitudes would be a significant unique predictor of sexual assault even when selfreported rape attitudes ie rape myth acceptance and hostility toward women were controlled We tested the generalizability of this prediction in two independent samples a sample of undergraduate college men n = 75 M age = 193 years and a sample of men from the community n = 50 M age = 359 years We found the novel implicit rape attitude assessment was significantly associated with the frequency of sexual assault perpetration in both samples and contributed unique variance in explaining sexual assault beyond rape myth acceptance and hostility toward women We discuss the ways in which future research on automatic rape attitudes may significantly advance measurement and theory aimed at understanding and preventing sexual assaultWe wish to thank Cal Yeaman and Tiffany Smith for their assistance collecting data for this project This research was supported in part by funding for Laura Widman from the American Psychological Association the American Psychological Foundation the Society the Psychological Study of Social Issues and NIH/NIAID 5 T32 AI 0700134 Training in Sexually Transmitted Diseases and HIV

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