Abstract
Abstract For decades researchers have been examining attitudes, cultural beliefs, and stereotypes of rape known as “rape myths,” yet demand characteristics of laboratory research can affect participant responses. To investigate one relevant situational variable, 83 young adults approached in a public mall were given the Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (RMAS), by one of two female researchers. One researcher dressed conservatively while the other dressed provocatively; half way through the study the researchers switched clothing to counterbalance any other experimenter effects besides that of clothing. A 2 × 2 be-tween-subjects ANOVA found that: (1) as expected, men scored higher than women on the RMAS; (2) surprisingly, both men and women scored higher on the RMAS when the researcher was dressed conservatively than dressed provocatively; (3) this paradoxical effect of researcher's clothing was more pronounced for men's scores than women's. We interpret this experimenter effect in two ways: (1) the respondents ...
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