Sexually aggressive college males: empathy as a moderator in the “Confluence Model” of sexual aggression

Abstract

We replicated the findings of Malamuth, Linz, Heavey, Barnes, and Acker [Malamuth, N. M., Linz, D., Heavey, C. L., Barnes, G., & Acker, M. (1995). Using the confluence model of sexual aggression to predict men's conflict with women: a 10-year follow-up study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69,2 (1995) 353] by using the Confluence Model to predict sexually aggressive behavior (SA) in a sample of undergraduate males. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses demonstrated that Hostile Masculinity (HM) and Impersonal Sex (IS) interact to predict SA. We extended the Confluence Model by adding a measure of generalized empathy to predict SA. Empathy moderated HM and IS in predicting SA, such that high-risk males (high HM and high IS) with low empathy reported higher rates of SA than all other males, while high-risk males with high empathy reported rates of SA comparable with those of all lower-risk males. The implications for multidimensional models of sexual aggression and the limitations of measuring rates of sexual aggression are discussed.