Sex Roles: A Journal of Research: But she was unfaithful: benevolent sexism and reactions to rape victims who violate traditional gender role expectations

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But she was unfaithful: benevolent sexism and reactions to rape victims who violate traditional gender role expectations

G. Tendayi Viki

Stereotypic beliefs about rape seem to influence people's evaluations of victims of sexual assault (e.g., Bohner et al., 1998; Krahe, 1988). Rape myths, which have been defined as "stereotypical beliefs about rape that put women at a disadvantage" (Bohner & Schwarz, 1996, p. 163), are an important example of such beliefs. Individuals high in rape myth acceptance (RMA) have been found to be less likely to define a situation as a "rape" even when it meets the legally accepted criteria (e.g., Fisher, 1986) and to attribute more blame to the victim of rape and less blame to the assailant (Krahe, 1988). An example of a rape myth is the commonly held belief that only certain types of women (e.g., sex-workers) are usually raped (Burt, 1980). Although such a myth is clearly empirically false, it serves the function of obscuring and denying the personal vulnerability of all women by suggesting that only certain kinds of women are vulnerable to sexual violence (Lonsway & Fitzgerald, 1994).

In the present research we examine victim blame in relation to different types of victims of acquaintance rape. In predicting victim blame, we consider the role of rape myth acceptance, but our main focus is on the role of benevolent sexist beliefs.

Benevolent Sexism and Victim Blame

Glick and Fiske (1996) proposed that sexist attitudes may not entirely manifest in hostile forms. Rather, sexist attitudes may be ambivalent (ambivalent sexism), composed of both hostile sexism (HS) and benevolent sexism (BS). Hostile sexism can be defined as the typical antipathy that is often assumed to characterize sexist prejudices. Benevolent sexism, on the other hand, is a set of attitudes that are sexist but subjectively positive and affectionate toward women. Glick and Fiske (1996) developed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI), which is a 22-item measure that assesses an individual's level of ambivalent sexism. Although, HS and BS subscales were found to be positively correlated (Masser & Abrams, 1999), Glick and Fiske (1996) maintained that BS and HS "have opposing evaluative implications, fulfilling the literal meaning of ambivalence" (p. 494). They argued that ambivalent sexists reconcile their hostile and benevolent feelings by classifying women into "good" (deserving BS) and "bad" (deserving HS ) subcategories. There appears to be some match between Glick and Fiske's theory and the existence of rape myths that suggest that only "bad girls" are sexually assaulted. It seems that the differentiation between "good" and "bad" women may provide grounds for individuals to blame certain victims of rapes.

We have previously proposed that BS may play an important role in victim blame, especially in acquaintance rape situations (Abrams, Viki, Masser, & Bohner, in press). Our reasoning was based, in part, on previous findings that women who are perceived to have "bad reputations" are more likely to be blamed for the occurrence of an acquaintance rape (Cassidy & Hurrell, 1995; L'Armand & Pepitone, 1982; Luginbuhl & Mulin, 1981). Indeed, lay-persons and legal practitioners have been found to attribute blame to rape victims on the basis of extra-legal factors such as alcohol consumption (Corcoran & Thomas, 1991), and type of clothing (Johnson, 1995). Such differences in victim blame appear to be consistent with the notion that rape victims are differentiated into "good" and "bad" subtypes. Benevolent sexism is significantly related to the idealization of women who conform to traditional norms (Glick et al., 2000). Therefore, it seems likely that individuals who are high in BS would be more likely to be "offended" by , and hence to blame, rape victims who may be perceived as violating traditional gender norms.

Consistent with this argument, Abrams et al. (in press) found that individuals high in BS assigned more blame than low BS individuals to the acquaintance rape victim. No differences in blame between high and low BS individuals were observed for the stranger rape. It is interesting that these effects were obtained even after the effects of HS and RMA were accounted for, which suggests that the above effects are unique to BS. Abrams et al. argued that their findings were obtained because high BS individuals hold particular beliefs about how "good" women should behave and thus view women who violate such expectations as deserving anything unfortunate that may happen to them.

An important limitation of Abrams et al.'s research is that they use the same two vignettes (stranger rape vs. acquaintance rape) across their studies. As such, it is possible that their observed results may be due to unintended subtle differences between the stimuli rather than to the general effects they hypothesized. In this study, we focused on acquaintance rape and varied the type of victim. Participants were presented with either one of two rape victims. For the first (control) victim, no information concerning her personal characteristics was provided, whereas the second victim was described as a "married mother of three." In essence, the description of a married mother who is raped by an acquaintance resulted in a scenario where a victim is sexually assaulted during an act that is potentially one of infidelity. If it is the case, as Abrams et al. argued, that individuals high in BS blame rape victims who violate traditional gender-role expectations, then a married woman who is raped while cheating on her husband should elicit very little sympathy. As such, we expected participants to attribute more blame to the "married mother" in comparison to the "control" victim. However, we hypothesized that this effect would be moderated by BS such that individuals high (rather than low) in BS would attribute more blame to the "married mother" than to the control victim. As in Abrams et al.'s studies, HS and RMA were not expected to moderate the effects of victim type on victim blame.

METHOD

Participants

Fifty-seven students (29 men, 28 women) from the University of Kent took part in this study. Participants' ages ranged from 18 to 39 years; 90% of the participants were younger than 27 years (M = 22.54, SD = 3.97); 78.2% of the participants were classified as European, 14.5% as Asian, 5.5% as African, and 1.8% as "Other."

Design

The study employed a between-subjects design, with victim type ("control" vs. "married mother") as the independent variable and victim blame as the dependent variable. Participants were randomly assigned to conditions. Both vignettes in this study described a story of a woman who went to a party where she met and became acquainted with a man. Later that night she invited him to her apartment where, after kissing him, she was subsequently raped. However, the victim in one of the conditions was described as a "married mother of three," in comparison to the "control" condition where no details about the victim's characteristics were provided. The above vignettes were identical except for the manipulation of the victim's personal characteristics.

Materials

Seven items measured the extent to which participants held the victim responsible for the event (e.g., "How much do you think Kathy should blame herself for what happened?"). These items were averaged to provide a victim blame score for each participant ([alpha] = .74). Participants also completed the Rape Myths Acceptance Scale (R Scale; Costin, 1985; [alpha] = .82), the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick & Fiske, 1996; HS, [alpha]= 88; BS, [alpha] = .85), and the Impression Management Scale (IM; Paulhus, 1991; [alpha] = .60). Individual differences in impression management were measured so that this variable could be used as a social desirability control in the data analyses. A 7-point Likert scale accompanied all the above measures.

Procedure

All the participants were approached while they were studying in the university library and asked whether they would complete a questionnaire on "gender relations." Those individuals who volunteered to participate were handed a questionnaire that contained either the "control" or "married mother" vignette and were left to complete the questionnaire on their own. In the questionnaire, participants first read the scenario that depicted the rape and then responded to the questions about victim blame. After this, participants responded to the ASI, Costin's R, and the IM scale, respectively. When the questionnaires had been completed, the researcher returned to thank and debrief the participants and to collect the questionnaires.

RESULTS

Preliminary analyses showed that gender did not reveal any significant main or interaction effects (with BS, KS, or RMA) on victim blame (all ps > .05). Therefore, gender is not discussed in further analyses. Correlation analyses were performed across conditions and this yielded significant correlations among all the measures (all ps < .01; see Table I).

To analyze the impact of victim type and BS, hierarchical regression analysis was employed. In the first step, victim type and BS were entered, and in the second step the interaction term (BS x Victim Type) was entered. The overall equation was significant, F = 6.81, p < .01. Significant main effects for victim type and BS were obtained (see beta coefficients in Table II). As expected, more blame was attributed to the "married mother" than to the "control" victim (M = 3.78, SD = 1.13; M = 3.03, SD = 0.81, respectively). The significant positive relationship between BS and victim blame indicates that the higher individuals scored on BS, the more they blamed the rape victim. These main effects were qualified by a significant interaction between BS and victim type (p = .047; see Table II). Simple effects analyses revealed that in the control condition the relationship between BS and victim blame was positive but failed to reach significance, [beta] = .14, t(31) = 0.77, ns. Although this result is in the expected direction, it is not consistent with the results from our previous research (e.g., Abrams et al., in press), where the positive relationship between BS and victim blame was found to reach statistical significance in a similar condition. In contrast, in the "married mother" condition there was a significant relationship between victim blame and BS, [beta] = .51, t(24) = 2.84, p < .01. Thus, the higher individuals scored on BS, the more they blamed the "married mother" for the rape. These effects remained significant even after the effects of IM, HS, and RMA were partialled out before entering BS, victim type, and the interaction term in the regression, pr = .29, [beta] = .25, t(56) = 2.00, p = .05. Separate hierarchical regression analyses (similar to those conducted for BS) were performed to examine whether HS and RMA interacted with victim type to predict victim blame. As predicted, the interaction effects between victim type and HS or RMA failed to reach significance (all ps> .05).

DISCUSSION

The present results are consistent with our main hypotheses. As expected, participants assigned more blame to the adulterous "married mother" in comparison to the "control" victim. This is consistent with previous research (e.g., Cassidy & Hurrell, 1995) and suggests that perceptions of the appropriateness of the victim's behavior may have some influence on the participants' reactions to different types of acquaintance rape victims. This proposal is further supported by the finding that individuals who are high in BS attributed more blame to the "married mother" than did low BS individuals. Thus, BS appears to provide an alternative mechanism through which some of the observed differences in victim blame can be accounted for. According to Glick et al. (2000), benevolent sexists have a tendency to idealize women who conform to traditional gender roles As such, a married woman who is raped during an act of potential infidelity could be viewed as grossly violating high BS individuals' behavioral standards and ma y then be blamed for the event.

Although several researchers have reported that rape victims who violate traditional gender roles are more likely to be blamed (e.g., Cassidy & Hurrell, 1995; Krahe, 1988), the present results are interesting because they suggest that BS is an important moderator of previously reported findings. Furthermore, previous researchers have tended to focus on the role of sexist hostility and adversarial sexual beliefs in the evaluation of rape victims (e.g., Krahe, 1988). In fact, Lonsway and Fitzgerald (1995) noted that RMA is mainly driven by hostile attitudes toward women. The present study adds to the research in this area by showing that subjectively positive sexist attitudes (BS) may also play an important role in the negative evaluations of some rape victims. Indeed, RMA did not moderate the effect of victim type on victim blame after the effects of BS were accounted for.

In the present research, we studied a student sample using hypothetical scenarios and paper and pencil responses. Therefore, future studies are required to explore whether the findings reported here can be replicated in more applied settings (e.g., jury decision making) and with different types of participants and cultures. Benevolently sexist attitudes often go unchallenged in broader society because they are perceived as prosocial (Glick & Fiske, 1996). However, the present research demonstrates some

potentially negative effects that could have serious consequences for the treatment and evaluation of rape victims.

Table I

Correlations Among Measures of Rape Myth Acceptance, Hostile Sexism,
Benevolent Sexism, and Victim Blame

                      Benevolent  Hostile  Rape myth
                        sexism    sexism   acceptance

Benevolent sexism         --
Hostile sexism           .50        --
Rape myth acceptance     .42        .52        --
Victim blame             .32        .43       .57

Note. All correlations significant at p < .05.

Table II

Regression Analysis of the Effects of Benevolent Sexism and Victim Type
on Victim Blame

Regression step      [beta]   T    Sig.   r   pr   sr   [R.sup.2] change

Step 1
  Benevolent sexism   .30    2.44  .018  .32  .32  .29
  Victim type         .35    2.88  .006  .37  .37  .35        .22
Step 2
  BS x Victim Type    .30    2.03  .047  .34  .27  .24        .06

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Preparation of this paper was made possible by a postgraduate research grant F3-37A-2 to G. Tendayi Viki by the Beit Trust, UK.

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G. Tendayi Viki (1,2) and Dominic Abrams (1)

(1.) University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, United Kingdom.

(2.) To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of Psychology, University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury CT2 7NP, United Kingdom; e-mail: gtv1@ukc.ac.uk.