The rape supportive cognition of rape prone men

The literature examining the offence supportive cognition of sexual offences against adult women appears to be divided into two different approaches. The social psychological approach utilises community samples of nonconvicted men such as men who demonstrate some level of Rape Proclivity, also known as rape prone men. In contrast, the forensic clinical literature utilises samples of convicted rapists. While the social psychology approach uses implicit methods in order to assess the non conscious aspect of cognition, forensic clinical researchers tend to rely on self report measures such as questionnaires and interviews.

The purpose of this thesis was to amalgamate these two disparate approaches, in order to systematically investigate the rape supportive cognition of rape prone men. Four studies were conducted in order to examine the four stages of a social cognition framework; structures, operations, products, and behaviour. Studies One to Three utilised implicit measures alongside traditional self report measures in order to examine the relative utility of each methodology. Study Four employed a unique design in which participants interacted with a female confederate, in order to examine their social perception abilities and further to study the links between rape supportive cognition and behaviour itself.

Contrary to expectations, the self report measure of rape supportive cognition appeared to be the most robust measure of cognition in rape prone men. The implicit measures used in Study One and Two, designed to measure rape supportive cognitive structure, however, failed to identify any such cognition in rape prone men. In Study Three, the implicit measure found evidence for just one of five rape supportive schema hypothesised to be held by rapists (Ward & Polaschek, 2002) in rape prone men. Finally, Study Four found some evidence for a social perception deficit in rape prone men, but this did not appear to have an impact on behaviour.

The results of all four studies are discussed in terms of existing theory of rape supportive cognition, and the methodology used to assess such cognition.