The Role of Male Sexual Arousal in Rape: Six Models

More documents

Recommendations

Info

626 HOWARD E. BARBAREE AND WILLIAM L. MARSHALL Malamuth, sexual arousal to rape cues is only part of an inte- grated set of behaviors and cognitions that characterize the rapist. Men who admit a potential for raping also have more callous attitudes toward rape and are more likely to believe in rape myths than are men who deny such a potential (Malamuth, 1981b; Malamuth, Haber, & Feshbach, 1980; Malamuth & Check, 1980). Additionally, men who respond with relatively strong erectile responses to rape cues, and who also express attitudes accepting of sexual violence toward women, are more likely to aggress against women when given the opportunity in the laboratory (Malamuth, 1983). Disinhibition of Arousal to Rape Stimuli The disinhibition model of rape arousal is a state model that describes how an emotional or cognitive state may increase the rape arousal of men who would otherwise show strong inhibition of rape arousal. If strength of inhibition of arousal by the rape cues is a defining difference between rapists and nonrapists, then nonrapists may be at risk for committing a sexually aggressive act should their inhibitory process be disrupted. If the effect of rape cues in decreasing arousal were to be suddenly removed, then arousal to the sexual cues during the rape descriptions would occur unabated. When a stimulus loses its inhibitory power abruptly because of some disruptive event, the process is known as disinhibition, and this concept has been applied to processes associated with the sexual response (Malamuth, Heim, & Feshbach, 1980; Yates, Barbaree, & Marshall, 1984). Circumstantial variables and events surrounding a sexual assault might influence its oc- currence through the disruption of stimulus inhibition. The following review describes laboratory experiments in which the disinhibition of rape arousal has been studied. First, we will describe the manipulations that decrease prosocial tendencies. The manipulations that have served to disinhibit arousal to violent cues have some or all of the following features in com- mon. First, they decrease the subject's motivation to behave in a prosocial way or to appear to behave in a prosocial way. Second, they create or increase anger or hostility in the subject toward the female victim. Permissive instructions. Barbaree and Murphy (1991) tested nonrapists over two sessions, presenting verbal descriptions of both consenting sexual activity and rape. One half of the subjects were initially told that arousal to the rape episode was normal, that the subject should not worry about it, and that such arousal to cues of force, violence, and nonconsent indicated nothing about his proclivity to enact such behavior. Given these permissive instructions, subjects showed disinhibited arousal to the rape stimuli in that they showed reduced discrimination between rape and consenting cues. Alcohol intoxication. Offenders often claim that their sexual assault was committed while they were severely intoxicated. It is estimated that up to 50% of rapists are intoxicated at the time of their offense (Christie, Marshall, & Lanthier, 1979; Gebhard, Gagnon, Pomeroy, & Christenson, 1965). The implication has been that alcohol intoxication causes sexual assault or facili- tates processes that cause sexual assault. However, the effects of alcohol intoxication on rape arousal are complex. Early studies in this area suggested that many of the alcohol effects were due to the subject's expectations rather than to direct pharmacologi- cal action. For example, Briddell et ai. (1978) used an experi- mental design known as the balanced placebo design, in which subjects were divided into two equal groups, with one group being told that they would receive an alcoholic beverage and the other group being told that they would receive a nonalcoholic beverage. Each group was further subdivided, with one sub- group actually receiving alcohol and the other receiving a nonalcoholic beverage. After subjects had ingested their beverages, Briddell et al. presented both consenting and rape cues to men while monitoring erectile responses. Subjects who thought they had consumed alcohol showed greater arousal to rape cues than did men who thought they had drunk no alcohol. Actual drink content did not influence sexual arousal to rape cues. We (Barbaree et al., 1983) used the balanced placebo design in a study much like that of Briddell et al. (1978). After being tested in a baseline session, subjects returned to the laboratory and were administered their expectancy instructions and a beverage. The amount of alcohol consumed was calculated to increase their blood alcohol level to 0.07% during arousal assessment, a larger dose than used by Briddell et al. After drinking their beverages, subjects were again presented with rape and consenting cues while their arousal was monitored. We found effects of alcohol intoxication, but they were not straightfor- ward. Subjects who were intoxicated failed to show the increase in discrimination between consenting and rape cues that we have previously seen in nonoffenders and that we saw in this study in the men who had not drunk alcohol. In this respect, the intoxicated nonoffenders were behaving like rapists we have tested. Anger toward a female. Yates et al. (l 984) monitored sexual arousal to verbal descriptions of rape and consenting sex. Sub- jects were told that the purpose of the study was to examine the effects of physical exercise on sexual arousal. Subjects in the "exercise-only" group were asked to pedal on a bicycle ergome- ter as fast as they could for one minute, after which they were tested in the sexual arousal laboratory. Subjects in the "angered" condition were also asked to pedal the bicycle ergome- ter. However, just before they commenced pedaling, a woman dressed in a laboratory coat (actually a confederate of the experimenter) entered the room and asked to borrow a piece of equipment. The woman was told to wait until the experimenter finished with the subject. At the end of the minute, the subject was told how "far" he had pedaled. In response to hearing this, the female confederate made a disparaging remark directed toward the subject concerning his performance. This same prov- ocation had been shown in an earlier pilot study to increase aggression in men toward a woman in the laboratory. The subject was then immediately tested in the arousal laboratory. The exercise-only group showed the usual strong inhibition of arousal to the rape cues. However, the angered group showed equally strong responding to rape cues as to consenting cues, indicating a complete lack of stimulus inhibition. Victim blame. The way in which the victim is portrayed in the rape vignette and her described response to the sexual assault can have an important influence on the subject's level of arousal in response to the stimulus. Malamuth and Check (1980) compared penile responses between two groups of men. One group listened to a portrayal of rape in which the victim
abhored her assault, and the other group listened to a portrayal in which the victim became sexually aroused. Men presented with a sexually aroused victim became more aroused to the rape stimulus. Sundberg, Barbaree, and Marshall (in press) examined the role of victim blame in disinhibiting arousal to rape cues in three separate studies. In a pilot study, rape vignettes were rated by 384 university undergraduates, both male and female, on the extent to which the victim was responsible or blameworthy in the assault. The vignettes varied in the clothing worn by the victim and her location when first observed by the rapist. Vic- tims wore either revealing or conservative dress and were lo- cated either in a deserted park or in a library These variables were combined factorially to construct four separate vignettes. When the victim wore revealing dress while walking in a deserted park, both male and female raters judged her to be signif- icantly more blameworthy than when the victim wore conservative dress or wore a revealing dress in a library In a subsequent laboratory experiment, erectile responses were monitored in response to rape vignettes in which victim blame was manipulated by varying the victim's dress and location. For those subjects who listened to the rape of the victim judged earlier to be more blameworthy, the discrimination between rape and consenting cues was markedly reduced, indicating a reduced strength of stimulus inhibition. Excusability of the rapist's behavior. Barbaree and Seto (1991) presented depictions of mutually consenting sex and date rape to male university undergraduates. These investiga- tors varied the information in the taped descriptions in the preamble to the actual sexual assault with the intention of ma- nipulating the subject's perception of the perpetrator's responsi- bility for the assault. In one set of descriptions, the rapist was described either as having one or two drinks or as being intoxicated after heavy drinking. In another set of descriptions, the rapist and the victim were described either as being on a first date or as having a long-standing sexual relationship. In a pilot study, the rapists who were described as intoxicated and who were said to have had a long-term sexual relationship with the victim were rated as being less to blame for committing a sexual assault. In a subsequent laboratory test, when the rape cues were preceded by information that excused the rapist by virtue of intoxication or his sexual relationship with the victim, sexual arousal was disinhibited. Exposure to pornography. It is commonly argued that when men are exposed to pornography, their risk of committing sexual offenses may increase. For example, Malamuth and Check (1981) exposed a group of undergraduate students to a violent, sexually explicit movie and a second group to a control, feature- length film. Results indicate that exposure to the sexually violent film increased male student's acceptance of interpersonal violence. Similarly, Malamuth and Check (1985) exposed undergraduates to a verbal description of an aggressive sexual inter- action in which the female victim was described as becoming sexually aroused. In subsequent measures of attitudes toward rape, these male students were more likely to endorse the rape myth that views women as enjoying rape encounters. Further- more, Malamuth (1981a) has shown that men who have been exposed to a rape version of a slide-audio show generate more violent sexual fantasies than do men exposed to a mutually SPECIAL SECTION: MALE SEXUAL AROUSAL IN RAPE 627 consenting slide-audio show. Finally, Sommers and Check (1987) have found that sexually aggressive partners of battered women were more likely to be consumers of pornography than was a matched comparison group. Marshall, Seidman, and Barbaree (1991) presented male university students with short videotaped sequences depicting either explicit or nonexplicit mutually consenting sex, explicit or nonexplicit rape, or a nonsexual scene. Explicit scenes depicted actors with full frontal nudity and a focus on the genitals during intercourse, and the presentation was in color with an audible sound track. Nonexplicit scenes did not depict nudity, nor any display of genitalia, and the presentations were in black and white with no audible sound track. The nonsexual scene in- volved an aviation theme. Then, subjects were presented with audiotaped vignettes of mutually consenting sex and rape, while erectile responses were monitored. Subjects who had been preexposed to rape scenes showed reduced discrimination between rape and mutually consenting stimuli, compared with subjects who had been preexposed to consenting or neutral stimuli. Therefore, this study provides empirical evidence that previous exposure to rape themes disinhibits men's arousal to rape cues. The disinhibition model may be most applicable to acquain- tance or date rapes, which are perpetrated by men who may not have other psychological characteristics of rapists, but who fail to respond appropriately to indications of nonconsent by their partner. Because the date rape may be the most numerous of all rapes (Koss & Dinero, 1988), the disinhibition model may ap- ply to the greatest number of rapes. Emotional State Augmentation According to this model, nonsexual emotional states modu- late the strength of a sexual response. For example, when a man has strong positive feelings of love or affection for a woman, his emotional state may serve to increase the strength of sexual arousal he experiences in response to sexual interactions with her. Similarly, when a man has strong negative feelings of hate or hostility toward a woman, or women in general, his emotional state may serve to increase the strength of sexual arousal he achieves during a rape or sexually assaultive behavior. Figure 4 presents this model in pictorial form. Barbaree (1990) describes an experiment conducted on an individual case that illustrates the model. The experiment studied a rapist who, on earlier plethysmographic assessment, was found to have strong arousal to descriptions of rape and weak arousal to consenting cues. In the experiment, the rapist was monitored for erectile responses, and he was presented with numerous trials in which he was presented with descriptions of rape. In each trial, he was asked to imagine that the woman in the rape descriptions was a woman he had known previously Three women from his past were chosen for these imagined rapes, one for whom he held a strong affection, one for whom he held a long-standing animosity, and one for whom his feelings were ambivalent. His pattern of response to the imagined rapes indicated that when he imagined raping a woman toward whom he was hostile, his arousal to the rape cues was the stron- gest. When he imagined raping the woman for whom he held affection, his rape arousal was attenuated. Therefore, there is a
Page 1 and 2: Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Page 3 and 4: might go on to postulate that sexua
Page 5: Inhibition Model: Cues of Force and
Page 9 and 10: References Abel, G. G,, Barlow, D.

The Role of Male Sexual Arousal in Rape: Six Models

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?