An evolutionary analysis of psychological pain following rape. III: Effects of force and violence

Abstract

Mental pain has been hypothesized to reflect psychological adaptation designed by selection to detect and cope with the occurrence of social problems that reduced individuals inclusive fitness in human evolutionary history. According to the hypothesis, mental pain is brought about by social tragedies in the lives of individuals and focuses an individual's attention on the events surrounding the pain, promoting correction of the pain-causing events and their avoidance in the future. The hypothesis applied to rape victims argues that in human evolutionary history raped females had increased fitness as a result of mental pain, because the pain forced them to focus their attention on the fitness-reducing circumstances surrounding rape, which are discussed. Some of the hypothesis' predictions about the psychological pain of rape victims are examined using a data set of 790 rape victims who were interviewed about their psychological traumatization within five days after the assault. Earlier analyses of these data have indicated that, as predicted, both a victim's age and marital status are proximate causes of the magnitude of psychological pain following rape: Reproductive-aged women appear to have been more severely traumatized by rape than older women or girls and married women more than unmarried women. The analyses herein indicate that, as predicted, reproductive-aged women are more likely to be victims of force and/or violence during rape than are older women or young girls. When force and/or violence was controlled, reproductive-aged women were still more psychologically traumatized by rape than were either older women or young girls. The results suggest that the psychology that regulates mental pain processes information about age and mateship status in the event of a woman's rape. The analyses reported here indicate that stranger rapes are more forceful and violent than either friend or family-member rapes.