Heterosocial perception in child molesters and rapists

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate child molesters' and rapists' perceptions of women's affect and sexual desire in first-date situations. Videotaped presentations of heterosexual couples in first-date situations were presented to 18 heterosexual child molesters, 9 homosexual child molesters, 25 rapists, 27 nonviolent non-sex offenders, and 30 violent non-sex offenders. For each videotaped segment, subjects categorized the woman's affect as rejecting, bored, neutral, friendly, or romantic and estimated how much sexual activity she desired after the date. Heterosexual child molesters, relative to their control group (nonviolent nonsex offenders), reported lower estimates of sexual desire when the women exhibited friendly and romantic affect. Heterosexual molesters also reported lower estimates of sexual desire and exhibited poorer categorization of affect relative to violent non-sex offenders when the women displayed romantic affect. Rapists did not show predicted affect-categorization deficits and did not report higher estimates of women's sexual desire relative to their control group.