The Reciprocal Effects of Rape Myth Acceptance and Proclivity to Perpetrate Sexual Violence

Background: Increasingly, campuses nationwide are implementing programming to prevent sexual violence. Social workers often oversee, implement, and design these prevention interventions. In order to be successful, prevention efforts require a full understanding of the antecedents of sexual violence perpetration. Rape myth acceptance and rape proclivity (the self-reported likelihood of committing sexual violence in the future assuming the person would never be caught) are attitudes associated with perpetration of sexual violence. Although this relationship is assumed to be unidirectional, with the rape myths acceptance contributing to rape proclivity, no studies have examined whether this relationship is reciprocal, with both rape myth acceptance and rape proclivity reinforcing each other over time.  

Methods: The data for this study are four waves of a larger longitudinal study conducted at a large public university in the Northeast of the United States. Using a sample of 526 college men, this study investigates the relationship between rape myth acceptance and rape proclivity according to two models: 1) the autoregressive effects of rape myth acceptance and rape proclivity wherein each construct predicts itself over time; and 2) rape myth acceptance and rape proclivity predicting each other over time in a reciprocal fashion. Using maximum likelihood estimation procedures in AMOS 22 to preform structural equation modeling, data from Time 1 (T1) to Time 4 (T4) were tested to see if reciprocal causality exists among the two variables of interest: rape myth acceptance and rape proclivity.

Results: Across all models, the fit indices showed a good fit to the data. All but one of the pathways in the final model were significant (p <.001). In the autoregressive model rape myth acceptance at each time point significantly predicted future rape myth acceptance. Similarly, for rape proclivity, all autoregressive paths were significant. With regards to reciprocal effects, rape proclivity at T1-T3 predicted rape myth beliefs at T2-T4. Finally, rape myth beliefs predicted rape proclivity at T2 and T3 but not at T1. The results of this study indicate that, contrary to prior assumptions, reciprocal causality exists for rape myth acceptance and rape proclivity.

Conclusions and Implications: This study is the first to examine the relationship between rape myth acceptance and rape proclivity. The findings demonstrate that several attitudes linked with sexual violence perpetration have a reciprocal relationship with each other over time with clear implications for social work prevention efforts directed towards modifying attitudes associated with perpetration. Campus prevention programs often target rape myth acceptance attitudes for intervention. Rape proclivity has been less studied, but the results of this study indicate that it is an important precursor to and outcome of, rape myth acceptance. As such, sexual violence prevention programs should address both rape myth acceptance and rape proclivity in order to reduce perpetration of sexual violence. Because these constructs predict each other over time, and are both linked to sexual violence perpetration, it is important that social workers find methods of reducing or eliminating both beliefs in men in order to reduce sexual violence rates on campuses nationwide.