Date of Award

6-6-2001

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Alan King

Abstract

Sexual abuse towards children and women is a common problem in our society. A focus of contemporary research has been on factors that influence individual perceptions about rape incidents. The premise is that warning signs might be present before some rapes, and a woman's sensitivity to risk might be a useful predictor of outcome and adjustment to sexual assault. Unfortunately, little research has been done on women's perceptions of scenarios that portend sexually threatening situations in the absence of overt sexual assault. An objective of the present study was to examine sensitivity to the potential risks or threats occurring during an interpersonal interaction. Participants included 193 female undergraduate students who were in one of three groups according to their history of sexual coercion: non-coerced, verbally coerced, and physically coerced. Participants viewed a scenario of a simulated interaction between a male graduate teaching assistant and a female undergraduate and reported on their perceptions regarding the sexual interest of the teacher and student and the level of inappropriateness of the interpersonal exchange in question. The physically coerced group perceived the teaching assistant as more sexually inappropriate to the student than either the non-coerced group or the verbally coerced group. Also, the more statements about previous verbal or physical coercion the participants endorsed, the more statements they identified as indicating the teaching assistant was acting sexually inappropriately.

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