Psychopathic traits predict harsh attitudes toward rape victims among undergraduates

Abstract

Sexual aggression is pervasive in American society and affects deleteriously the lives of men and women. Two potential predictors sexual assault are psychopathic personality (psychopathy) traits and rape myth acceptance (RMA), although there is a paucity of research on the relation between RMA and psychopathic traits. We adopted a multi-measure approach to the associations among all three variables in two racially diverse college undergraduate samples (overall N=608). Consistent with our predictions, most psychopathy features significantly predicted RMA, and relations were most pronounced for subdimensions reflecting callousness, antagonism, and lack of empathy (rs ranged from 0.34 to 0.46). In contrast, boldness features were not significant predictors of RMA (rs ranged from 0.01 to 0.12). Gender moderated the relations between coldheartedness and RMA, such that effects were significantly stronger for females. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that the traditional, maladaptive aspects of psychopathy were moderate predictors of RMA, with effects being strongest for cold and guiltless psychopathy features, followed by disinhibition. These findings raise the possibility that RMA may be one mechanism by which psychopathy influences sexual aggression given that RMA is regarded as an attitudinal precursor to these outcomes.