A New Measure of Attitudes Toward Sexually Predatory Tactics and Its Relation to the Triarchic Model of Psychopathy

Abstract

Psychopathic personality traits are associated with a variety of sexually coercive behaviors. The current study introduced a new measure of attitudes toward sexually predatory tactics and used the triarchic conceptualization of psychopathy as a framework for understanding the association between psychopathy and sexual coercion. The new measure, in which respondents rate the behaviors of men employing various sexually coercive tactics, had a two-component structure and was associated with other measures of problematic sexual behaviors. For the vignettes describing manipulative behaviors, men who were bolder, meaner, and more disinhibited rated these behaviors as more acceptable and as behaviors they would be more likely to enact. There was also an interaction between boldness and disinhibition: At higher levels of boldness, disinhibition became a stronger predictor of positive attitudes toward these behaviors. Only disinhibition was related to reporting more positive attitudes toward vignettes describing more extreme and potentially criminal predatory behaviors.