ABSTRACT: "Evaluated how heterosexual men and women perceived specific dating behaviors and how their attitudes toward the behaviors related to willingness to engage in sexual intercourse and date rape. 257 women and 201 men received a questionnaire where ""who asked?'' and ""who paid?'' for the date were varied. Ss indicated how much they thought the woman and man in the scenario wanted sex (female sex willingness and male sex willingness, respectively) and how justified the man in the scenario would be to have sex with the woman without her consent (rape justifiability). Female sex willingness was highest when the woman asked and/or paid for the date, and male sex willingness was highest when the man asked and/or paid for the date. Men's ratings of both the woman's and the man's sex willingness were consistently higher than the women's ratings."
ABSTRACT: "Examined the effects of race (Black or White) and gender of assailant and victim on perceptions of date rape among university students. 43 White and 10 Black women and 15 White and 2 Black men read a scenario describing a date that ended with a forced sexual encounter (FSE) and responded to a series of questions about the interaction. FSE was perceived as less serious when the victim was a Black woman than when the victim was a White woman. Women were more likely than men to define the FSE as a crime, and women were more in favor of prosecuting the perpetrator than were men. Men were less likely than women to agree that the assailant should have stopped when victim in the vignette asked him to."
Data obtained by college students indicate that majority of females who report unwanted sexual experiences do not define them as rape.
ABSTRACT: "Examined the perceived causes of date rape by the use of network analysis. 142 undergraduates were presented with grids containing 9 causes listed by row and column. They were asked to indicate if they believed there was a causal link between each of the 72 causal pairings. The resulting network placed emphasis on male and female drunkenness, norms of dating, and society's attitude to date rape as distal causes of date rape. Misunderstanding of behavior by men, male attitude that date rape is unimportant, and need by males for dominance were seen as proximal causes. Further networks for each sex were constructed; these showed clear division of opinion on the causes of date rape."
ABSTRACT: Discusses analytical models developed to identify perceptions that may serve as cognitive mediators of rape judgments, including blaming victims, attribution of rape culpability, date rape attribution, and the influence of violent behavior. Victim blame appears to play little role in mediating judgment regarding punishment, restitution, and whether or not rape occurred. Earlier onset of victim protest increased recognition of the incident as rape, the likelihood that the offender would be convicted, and the likelihood that Ss would choose to award civil damages to the victim. The effects of onset were mediated by perception of the victim as desiring sexual intercourse. The degree of force used by the perpetrator yielded similar effects, mediated by the judges' perception of the incident as violent but only for male judges.
ABSTRACT: "A hypothesis derived from marital rape laws suggests that women are perceived as obligated to have sex by precedence; this was tested in Exp 1 with 357 introductory psychology students. Ss who read a rape scenario were more likely to perceive that the resisting woman should have sex and less likely to label the act as rape if the couple had had coitus 10 times before (high precedence). An alternative hypothesis derived from the common law on easements by prescription suggests that sexual precedence should affect men and women equally. In Exp 2 with 328 psychology or administration-of-justice students, either the man or the woman refused sex after foreplay. Both men and women were perceived to be obligated by sexual precedence. Survey results show that male and female actors' compliant sexual behaviors were related to precedence. Results are explained as reflecting norms that function to preserve mutually satisfactory relationships."
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