The Role of Male Sexual Arousal in Rape: Six Models

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624 HOWARD E. BARBAREE AND WILLIAM L. MARSHALL The concept of stimulus control has been applied to responses that are acquired through a process of classical conditioning and to responses that have been learned through instrumental learning. Sexual arousal responses may be learned through either process (Laws & Marshall, 1990). The following discussion is not specific as to the conditioning or learning origins of the responses. Therefore, our description of the process of stimulus control will use terms applicable to classical conditioning, which characterize the response as being elicited, whereas some authors may interpret the response as being an instrumental response. A complete discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of the present paper. Sexual Preference." Cues of Force and Violence as Excitatory Cues The view of rape as a paraphiliac behavior defines a model of rape in which the subject's arousal is evoked or increased by cues of force, nonconsent, humiliation, and so forth. According to the sexual preference hypothesis, rapist paraphiliacs engage in rape behavior because the cues associated with the act are maximally arousing and because the act is therefore optimally rewarding or satisfying. This view of rape regards the behavior as analogous to other paraphilias, such as pedophilia or fe- tishism. The model of rape arousal as a paraphiliac behavior is presented in Figure 2. Abel et al. (1977) recorded the sexual arousal of rapists and a group ofnonrapist sexual deviates during 2-min verbal descriptions of mutually consenting sex and rape. The rapists were more aroused by descriptions of forced sex than were the nonrapists. However, the rapists did not show a sexual preference for rape. As a group, the rapists were equally aroused by rape and consenting cues, whereas nonrapists were consider- ably less aroused by rape than they were by the consenting sexual descriptions. Soon after, these findings were supported by reports by Barbaree, Marshall, and Lanthier (1979) and Quinsey and Chaplin (1982, 1984). However, later, in strong support of the sexual preference hypothesis, Quinsey, Chaplin, and Upfold (1984) reported that rapists showed stronger arousal to rape cues than did nonof- fenders and stronger arousal to rape cues than to consenting cues (Quinsey, personal communication, January, 1988). Simi- larly, Earls and Proulx (1986) reported findings from a study of francophone rapists, using translations of the Abel, Blanchard, Becker, and Djenderedjian (1978b) verbal descriptions of rape, consenting sex, and assault. However, Baxter, Barbaree, and Marshall (1986) reported re- sults from 60 rapists and 41 nonrapists indicating that both groups showed significantly less arousal to rape than to mutually consenting cues. Similarly, Murphy, Krisak, Stalgaitis, and Anderson (1984) and Langevin et al. (1985) failed to find signifi- cant differences between rapists and nonrapists in their responses to sexual violence. The discrepant findings in this literature are confusing, and at this time the discrepancies are unexplained. Blader and Mar- shall (1989) have suggested that the discrepancies might be due to differences among studies in the demographic characteris- Stimulus Sexual Stimulus Rape Stimulus Normal Arousal n0 Stimulus: Arousal: Sexual Stimulus Rape Stimulus + or 0 • ~ + Pathological As in Sadism-Paraphilia Figure 2. The sexual preference model. tics of the subject samples, with the more deviant samples hav- ing a psychiatric history leading to more deviant arousal on testing. Barbaree (1990) has suggested that studies have used widely different methods for the construction of rape stimuli and that these methodological differences may have led to the discrepant findings. Further research is required to assess whether, and to what extent, rapists as a group show excitation of sexual arousal to rape cues. The use of the penile plethysmograph in forensic assessments of accused rapists follows directly from this model. In these assessments, arousal to deviant sexual cues is often taken to be an indication of a sexual interest in the deviance, or a sexual preference. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the uses and misuses of sexual preference data in forensic assessments. However, plethysmographic assessments often result in the inference of a sexual preference, when such an inference is an oversimplification. Recognition of other models of rape arousal, as presented here, may discourage such oversimplification.
Inhibition Model: Cues of Force and Violence as Inhibitory Barbaree et al. (1979) interpreted their findings using an inhibitory model of rape arousal. They viewed the sexual stimulus as a compound stimulus. The compound stimulus included the descriptions of sexual interactions and physical aspects of the woman in the vignette, and these sexual cues had the effect of increasing arousal. However, during the rape descriptions, rape cues including descriptions ofnonconsent, force, violence, and suffering of the victim were seen to serve, especially in nonrapists, as inhibitory stimuli, reducing the arousal that would otherwise occur to the sexual cues. In a trait model of rape arousal, these authors posited that the rapists may not have the same strength of inhibition to the rape stimuli, and hence, this trait may be a defining characteristic distinguishing rapists from nonrapists. The inhibition model of rape arousal is presented in Figure 3. A second important indication of inhibitory differences between these two groups of men had to do with the increased discrimination between consenting and rape arousal over ses- sions. A number of studies have reported that nonrapists show Stimulus: Arousal: Sexual Stimulus + R ape Sti mu 1 us ,-- - Normal -Inhibition Stimulus: Arousal: Sexual Stimulus Rape Stimulus r---t"- 0 PathologicaI-Disinhibition Figure 3. The inhibition model is presented in the upper panel, and the disinhibition model is presented in the lower panel. SPECIAL SECTION: MALE SEXUAL AROUSAL IN RAPE 625 greater strength of inhibition in a second session than in the first session. No such effect was found with the rapists (Bar- baree et al., 1979; Baxter et al., 1986). Subjects' emotional responses to the rape descriptions may result in this inhibition. The subject may become fearful or anxious in response to the descriptions of a violent and crimi- nal act, or he may respond with an emotional reaction to the description of harm and upset displayed by the victim. Similar emotional responses may be evoked as a result of empathy for the victim. These emotional responses could inhibit sexual arousal through activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which is known to decrease the erectile response. Malamuth and Check (1980, 1983) have provided indirect support for this idea by showing that when the victim is described as being in greater pain and distress, which might be expected to evoke an even stronger emotional response in the subject, sexual arousal to the rape descriptions was reduced. Also, subjects may be responding to experimenter demands. Subjects recognize that arousal to the rape descriptions would be socially inappropriate. Generally, subjects in psychological research have behaved in such a way as to appear socially ap- propriate or normal, and they may perceive a purpose to the experiment and want to appear as cooperative subjects (Ro- senthal & Rubin, 1978). Accordingly, they may deliberately sup- press arousal to the rape descriptions while attempting to en- hance arousal to the consenting scenes. As mentioned above, nonrapists show a more pronounced discrimination between mutually consenting cues and rape cues in a second assessment session both because of enhanced arousal to consenting cues and because of reduced arousal to rape cues (Barbaree et al., 1979; Barbaree, Marshall, Yates, & Lightfoot, 1983; Baxter et al., 1986). Perhaps practice allows nonrapists to become more proficient in making themselves appear more socially appro- priate. Inhibition of sexual arousal to rape cues can be viewed as a prosocial act. The more concern the subject has for the imag- ined victim, the more positive his attitudes toward women, and the more sensitive he is to her pain and suffering, the stronger will be the emotional component that produces the inhibition. Also, the more sensitive the subject is to societal restrictions concerning inappropriate sexual behavior, the more likely he will be to expend the effort required to reduce his arousal to rape in the laboratory. Numerous authors have postulated a continuum of individual differences in responses thought to be important in rape in the general population of men. For example, Abel et al. (1977) computed a rape index (rape arousal/consenting arousal) and showed that the mean index was higher among rapists than among nonrapists and that this index has been found to be correlated with the rapist's number of previous victims and the likelihood of victim injury (Abel, Blanchard, & Becker, 1978). Presumably, the index quantifies the tendency in the individual to inhibit sexual arousal to cues of nonconsent and force. We (Barbaree et al., 1979) have postulated that, in the general population of men, individuals differ in the strength of their inhibition to rape cues. Similarly, Malamuth and an associate (Mala- muth, 198 la, 1983, 1986; Malamuth & Check, 1983) have suggested that a continuum exists of the "likelihood of raping" among the general male population. Furthermore, according to
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