Abstract
Emerging adult college students (77 men, 82 women) in the U.S. evaluated consent and the acceptability of a sexual act in hypothetical scenarios which varied the response of the protagonist/victim, the length of the relationship and the gender of the protagonist. Judgments of the acceptability of sexual acts were strongly associated with judgments of consent. Judgments of consent and the acceptability, responsibility for and deserved-punishment for the sexual act differed depending on the victim’s responses and relationships lengths. Compared to women, men judged sex after the freezing response to be more acceptable, and the perpetrator to be less responsible and less punish-worthy. In addition, men were less likely than women to label responses where the victim froze as rape. No differences were found between participants in their first years of college compared to their last years of college.
Highlights
Consent is necessary for a healthy sexual relationship, but what if men and women have different ideas of what consent entails? Research has argued that men and women do have different conceptions of what counts as sexual consent (Hickman & Muehlenhard, 1999; Sawyer, Pinciaro, & Jessell, 1998), and a mismatch in assumptions about consent can be devastating since it can result in sexual assault
The current study examines the role of consent in attitudes about sexual assault in dating during the college years because sexual assault is a particular problem during the college years, peaking between the ages of 18–24 (Sinozich & Langton, 2014), when victims of date-rape and other sexual assaults are especially common
There was no significant main effect of gender, F(1, 149) = 3.76, p = .054, ηp2 = .03, the relationship length effect was qualified by a relationship length × participant gender effect, F(2, 298) = 9.60, p < .001, ηp2 = .06 with 90% CI [.02; .11], which indicated that men evaluated vignettes as being significantly more consensual than women
Summary
Research has argued that men and women do have different conceptions of what counts as sexual consent (Hickman & Muehlenhard, 1999; Sawyer, Pinciaro, & Jessell, 1998), and a mismatch in assumptions about consent can be devastating since it can result in sexual assault. Rape is one form of sexual assault that is often defined as including “forced penetration” (What Is the Difference Between Rape and Sexual Assault?|Office of Justice Programs, n.d.) Both sexual assault and rape include nonconsent as a key part of what makes these acts criminal. Some young adults may have difficulty understanding what constitutes consent, especially when it involves many different types of cues. Consent can change over the course of an interaction (Beres, Senn, & McCaw, 2014) These difficulties mean people may not always agree on what constitutes consent, and what constitutes sexual assault. It is possible that sexual assault increases around college age because of increased opportunities combined with a lack of comprehension of consent
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