Abstract
Around 90% of rape victims know their perpetrator, making acquaintance rape the most common form of rape, contradicting societal beliefs. There is ambiguity about the meaning and use of consent in sexual scenarios (Beres, 2007). This study used a mixed methods approach to test the effectiveness of a campaign video aimed at increasing understanding of consent. We assessed whether the video affected rape judgments in vignettes depicting consensual or non-consensual sexual scenarios. We also manipulated whether making consent the primary or secondary question influenced attitudes. Text responses were also obtained to gain an insight into participant reasoning. The campaign showed no increase in rape judgments. Making consent primary in question order did lead to greater accuracy in rape judgment. A content analysis of the free-text responses indicated that the presence of the campaign actually reduced people’s use of consent in explaining why a scenario may represent rape: Instead they focused on the attractiveness of the attacker. These results are discussed in relation to the effectiveness of passively viewing campaign material.
Highlights
Rape is typically defined as intentional penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person without their consent and when the alleged perpetrator does not reasonably believe that the person consented (Home Office, 2003)
Core to the definition of rape is consent: A person consents if the person agrees by choice and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice in United Kingdom law (Ministry of Justice Home Office Office for National Statistics, 2013), there are some debates in the psychological literature as to what defines consent (Beres, 2007; Muehlenhard et al, 2016)
There was a significant effect of question order on rape identification, F(1, 90) = 32.81, MSE = 0.02, p< 0.001, ηp2 = 0.27, in which the consent-first question order led to significantly more rape judgments (M = 0.47, SE = 0.02) than the rapefirst question order (M = 0.36, SE = 0.02)
Summary
Rape is typically defined as intentional penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person without their consent and when the alleged perpetrator does not reasonably believe that the person consented (Home Office, 2003). There are many campaigns that aim to increase public knowledge of sexual consent: This is especially important because the public comprises those who could be victims, perpetrators, bystanders, or jurors in rape trials. The effectiveness of such campaigns is limited (Brecklin and Forde, 2001).
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