College Students' Perception of Rape

Presenter Information

Laura Gutierrez
Dorothy Moore

Document Type

Oral Presentation

Campus where you would like to present

SURC 137A

Start Date

21-5-2015

End Date

21-5-2015

Keywords

Students' Perceptions, Crime Severity, Alcohol Intoxication

Abstract

College students are the biggest population that experience rape situations and has the biggest population that accepts and endorses rape myths overall. The purpose of this study was to ask college students their perceptions of rape depending on the gender of the perpetrator and whether or not the victim, who was presented as being under the influence of alcohol, repeatedly says “no” to the perpetrator. Participants rated the severity of the assault and had the option of saying the assault was not a crime in order to investigate whether college students realize that having sex with an intoxicated person is rape even if they don’t say no. The results demonstrated that the rape involving a female victim was rated more severely than when the rape victim was a male. The results also demonstrated that when the intoxicated victim said “no”, the rape scenario was rated more severely than when the intoxicated victim said nothing. Implications of these results are discussed.

Faculty Mentor(s)

Marte Fallshore

Department/Program

Psychology

Additional Mentoring Department

Psychology

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May 21st, 1:10 PM May 21st, 1:30 PM

College Students' Perception of Rape

SURC 137A

College students are the biggest population that experience rape situations and has the biggest population that accepts and endorses rape myths overall. The purpose of this study was to ask college students their perceptions of rape depending on the gender of the perpetrator and whether or not the victim, who was presented as being under the influence of alcohol, repeatedly says “no” to the perpetrator. Participants rated the severity of the assault and had the option of saying the assault was not a crime in order to investigate whether college students realize that having sex with an intoxicated person is rape even if they don’t say no. The results demonstrated that the rape involving a female victim was rated more severely than when the rape victim was a male. The results also demonstrated that when the intoxicated victim said “no”, the rape scenario was rated more severely than when the intoxicated victim said nothing. Implications of these results are discussed.