Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

Purpose: This study investigates the attitudes about rape held by students at a large Midwestern university. Burt (1980) defined rape myths as “prejudicial, stereotyped, or false beliefs about rape, rape victims, and rapists.” A convincing link has been established between belief in rape myths and intentions, and between those beliefs and behavior. Believing in rape myths is related to men's self-reported intent to rape, as well as to self-reported rape behavior (Briere & Malamuth 1983, Hamilton & Yee 1990, Malamuth 1981, all ctd in Johansson-Love & Greer 2003). Thus, understanding the origins of these attitudes is incredibly important. However, research on rape myths has largely overlooked the importance of social networks—that is, who individuals know and interact with on a daily basis. This study measures social networks in a unique way, addressing both whether a respondent knows a survivor directly or indirectly and the intimacy of the relationship.

Method: A random sample of 500 undergraduate students at a large Midwestern university received an email invitation to participate in the survey, which was available online. The survey yielded a response rate of 38.8%. The survey assessed both rape myth adherence and whether a person knew a survivor of rape. Many indices have been developed to measure attitudes about rape—commonly called “Rape Myth Adherence Indices” (e.g., Burt 1980). The index in this study draws on previous studies (Burt 1980; Hinck & Thomas 1999; Carmody & Washington 2001) but was updated after interviewing sexual assault program directors in the area. The index was broken down into five sub-indices based on content: Victim Blaming/Masochism, Victim Falsification, Myths about/Excusing Perpetrator, Pro-Feminist Attitudes and Non-Feminist Attitudes.

Social network measured both degree of proximity (i.e., “I know a survivor personally” versus “I know someone who knows a survivor”) as well as degree of closeness (the intimacy of the relationship). Relationship to survivor thus incorporated whether a respondent knew a survivor and how close that relationship was, resulting in a scale of increasing closeness.

I conducted an ordinary least squares regression using SPSS to investigate whether social network significantly altered rape myth adherence after controlling for various demographic variables.

Results: As hypothesized, participants who were close to survivors denounced rape myths; conversely, the majority of participants who did not know a survivor adhered to rape myths (p<.05). This was true even when controlling for gender, race, political affiliation, major, sexual orientation, and whether a person had participated in an anti-rape workshop. Interestingly, however, high adherence to rape myths peaked among those who knew a survivor but not personally. This suggests that knowing a survivor does not counteract rape myths unless the relationship is a close one.

Conclusions and Implications: This study demonstrates the importance of social networks in attitudes about rape. Effective interventions and educational programming must account for the impact of social networks. Future research is advised to examine exactly how and when attitude change occurs through longitudinal studies or case studies combined with interviews.