Hispanic and majority student attitudes toward forcible date rape as a function of differences in attitudes toward women

Abstract

Less rejecting attitudes toward forcible date rape are related to more traditional attitudes toward women, as measured by the Attitudes Toward Women Scale (G. J. Fischer, “College Student Attitudes Toward Forcible Date Rape. I. Cognitive Predictors,” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 1986, 15, 457–466). Does this relation reflect more traditional or more negative attitudes toward women? If the former, then an ethnic minority having still more traditional attitudes toward women (than the nonethnic majority), also should be less rejecting of forcible date rape. This hypothesis was assessed by surveying attitudes of bicultural and bilingual Hispanic, other self-reported Hispanics, and nonethnic majority college students from a large introductory sociology class in a large Southwestern university. Results showed that Hispanics, overall, (1) had more traditional attitudes toward women than nonethnic majority and (2) as hypothesized, had less rejecting attitudes toward forcible date rape. However, these effects were not a simple function of ethnicity, at least not for males. For example, bicultural and bilingual Hispanic males were least likely to blame the male for the forcible date rape, but were no less rejecting of such behavior than other Hispanic males and had no more traditional attitudes toward women than other Hispanic or majority males. Bicultural and bilingual Hispanic females, on the other hand, were most likely to blame the male, had the least rejecting attitudes toward date rape, and had the most traditional attitudes toward women. one interpretation is that exposure to less restrictive sex roles of the majority culture is a liberating influence on Hispanic females, but not on Hispanic males who, perhaps, see more liberal attitudes toward women as having no or even negative payoff. Differences found between Hispanics who are bicultural and bilingual and other self-reported Hispanics suggest that these groups should not be combined, and that a research sample needs to be defined more specifically than “Hispanic.”