Rape-Accepting Attitudes

Abstract

Violence prevention, including rape and sexual assault prevention in the United States, has become a major concern for public health professionals. As a result, educational institutions have implemented rape prevention programs in an attempt to change rape-supportive attitudes and, thus, deter rapes. As an initial step in testing the relationship between rape-supportive attitudes and rape, this study examined 851 adolescent males who completed attitude and behavior surveys as part of a larger longitudinal study. The focus of this study is twofold: first, to determine if attitudes that are accepting of forced sex will predict the initiation of forced sex by adolescent males and, second, to determine if rape-accepting attitudes result from perpetration of forced sex. The data indicate that changing rape myth attitudes altered the behavior of forced sex in this population of males. Implications of the findings are discussed.