Women are not swayed by sugar‐coated acts of verbal sexual coercion

Sexual coercion is receiving much attention with the #MeToo movement. Not all of the tactics that perpetrators use to coerce sex are perceived to be equally unacceptable. This study examined factors that may mitigate negative perceptions, including features of the perpetrator's tactics (verbal vs. physical tactics, relationship‐focused vs. self‐focused reasons to coerce sex) and raters' own current relationship (commitment, dependence, sexually coercive experiences). College women (N = 498) rated whether the perpetrator's behavior was acceptable, was excusable, and would adversely affect a relationship. Verbal (vs. physical) coercion, dependence on a current partner, and sexually coercive experiences in a current relationship mitigated negative perceptions. However, participant ratings were not influenced by the perpetrator's use of relationship‐focused reasons for coercing sex (vs. self‐focused reasons), suggesting that women may resist male attempts to sugar‐coat sexual coercion.     

Claiming Responsibility for Action Under Duress

This paper argues that to understand the varieties of wrongs done in coercion, we should examine the dynamic normative relation that the coercer establishes with the coerced. The case rests on a critical examination of coercion by threat, which is proved irreducible to psychological inducement by overwhelming motives, obstruction of agency by impaired consent or deprivation of genuine choice. In contrast to physical coercion, coercion by threat requires the coercee’s participation in deliberation to succeed. For this kind of coercion to be successful, there must be a normative relation established by the coercer and the coercee, in which they recognize each other as rational agents. In such cases, the coercee is wronged in the exercise of her deliberative powers. As a consequence, this form of coercion does not cancel the coercee’s moral responsibility for coerced action. Reclaiming the coercee’s responsibility for action under threat does not diminish the visibility and gravity of the coercer’s wrongdoing. On the contrary, it allows us to capture some features of the coercive relation that otherwise remain unfocused and thus identify the distinctive ways in which the coercee is wronged.     

Against Two Modest Conceptions of Hard Paternalism

People in our liberal pluralistic society have conflicting intuitions about the legitimacy of coercive hard paternalism, though respect for agency provides a common source of objection to it. The hard paternalist must give adequate reasons for her coercion which are acceptable to a free and equal agent. Coercion that fails to meet with an agent’s reasonable evaluative commitments is at least problematic and risks being authoritarian. Even if the coercer claims no normative authority over the coercee, the former still uses coercion to replace the latter’s reasons or will with his own reasons or will. But does every hard paternalistic view have to invite such objection? Throughout I will assume that defenders of what I will call “Neutral Paternalism” (NP) and “Commonsense Paternalism” (CP) aim to offer reasons for coercion all can reasonably endorse despite evaluative diversity, in opposition to more objectionable forms of coercive paternalism, such as those which defend it on religious or perfectionist grounds. I will argue, nonetheless, that Gerald Dworkin’s defense of NP and Danny Scoccia’s defense of CP succumb to the same problems of objectionable imposition that saddle other forms of coercive paternalism. The shortcomings in their views suggest that even modest hard paternalism is nonetheless problematic for liberals.     

Women's reactions to hypothetical male sexual touch as a function of initiator attractiveness and level of coercion

This study investigated women's reactions to hypothetical male sexual advances and how these reactions are influenced by the physical attractiveness of the initiator. The 144 mostly Caucasian female participants were given vignettes asking them to imagine themselves as the recipients of an uninvited sexually coercive advance from a casual male acquaintance. The acquaintance was described as either attractive or unattractive, and the level of sexual coercion was low, medium, or high. Participants evaluated the situation in terms of how negatively or positively it would affect them, how socially acceptable it would be, and how much it would flatter them. The results indicate that for women, as has previously been shown for men, the attractiveness level of the opposite gender perpetrator redefines how the sexual advances are perceived. In addition, the results support earlier findings that women view sexual advances which use low levels of sexual coercion less negatively than those employing higher levels.     

Men's and Women's Reactions to Hypothetical Sexual Advances: The Role of Initiator Socioeconomic Status and Level of Coercion

Research on sexual coercion has revealed a beauty bias in that participants judge coercive sexual advances committed by attractive individuals as more acceptable than coercive advances committed by unattractive individuals. In this study, we examined the extent to which there exists a similar socioeconomic status bias in people's perceptions. Participants (N = 160) read 1 of 8 vignettes that depicted sexual advances and responded to several questions about the acceptability of the initiator's behavior. The coerciveness of the advance was manipulated by varying whether the touch occurred in a gentle manner with no threat or in a forceful manner with a threat of harm. Male participants always received a vignette that portrayed a woman initiating a sexual advance, and female participants always received a vignette that portrayed a man initiating a sexual advance. Socioeconomic status of the initiator was manipulated by what type of clothing he/she wore (shabby or expensive) and the car he/she drove (old or new). Results indicated that a gentle touch was more acceptable than a forceful touch, and men found sexual advances more acceptable than did women. Participants rated sexual advances by wealthy individuals as more acceptable than sexual advances by poor individuals. However, the greater acceptability of advances by wealthy individuals appeared to hold up only in the case of a gentle touch. In addition, men appeared to be more prone to the socioeconomic status bias than were women. Methodological limitations and future directions are discussed.     

Exploitative,irresistible, and coercive offers: why research participants should be paid well or not at all

This paper begins with the assumption that it is morally problematic when people in need are offered money in exchange for research participation if the amount offered is unfair. Such offers are called ‘coercive’, and the degree of coerciveness is determined by the offer's potential to cause exploitation and its irresistibility. Depending on what view we take on the possibility to compensate for the sacrifices made by research participants, a wish to avoid ‘coercive offers’ leads to policy recommendations concerning payment for participation. For sacrifices considered compensable, we ought to offer either no payment or payment at a level deemed fair, while for sacrifices deemed incompensable, we always ought to offer no payment because as compensation appears and increases, so too does coercion. This article provides a model for thinking of the way in which degrees of exploitativeness, irresistibility, and coerciveness interact with the size of the reward for compensable and incompensable cases. The conclusions are of particular relevance in contexts where potential research participants are poor or in other ways lack reasonably good options, as is often the case when international pharmaceutical companies or researchers based in the Global North place clinical trials in the Global South.     

The influence of sex and sex role orientation on sexual coercion

One hundred female and 77 male college students completed a questionnaire in which they indicated whether they had ever used physical or verbal coercive strategies to initiate sexual behavior with a partner, or had ever engaged in sexual behavior in response to a partner's coercive initiatives. Results showed that males are far more likely than females to initiate coerced sexual behavior and females are more likely to be victimized. In addition, masculine persons reported using coercive strategies more than other sex role orientation types. However, this was due principally to the fact that males were masculine types much more frequently than females. Therefore, sex (that is, being male or female) seems a more critical factor in determining, initiating, or responding to sexual coercion than sex role orientation.     

Behind the Pencil/Paper Measurement of Sexual Coercion: Interview-Based Clarification of Men's Interpretations of Sexual Experiences Survey Items1

The ubiquity of self-report pencil and paper surveys in sexual coercion research is matched only by the lack of attention to respondents' individual interpretations of survey items. Our purpose in this study was to examine men's interpretations of four apparently ambiguous items from a commonly used sexual coercion research instrument, the original Sexual Experiences Survey (SES; Koss & Oros, 1982). After completing the SES, college men (N = 102) were immediately interviewed about their interpretations of 4 of the SES items. Across the interviews, the men reported a variety of interpretations of each item. Ignoring SES item interpretations when forming research conclusions has significant implications for sexual coercion research. Based on the results of this investigation, we urge caution in interpreting results of studies based on self-administered measures of coercive sexual behavior.     

The ultimate femme fatale? Narcissism predicts serious and aggressive sexually coercive behaviour in females

Narcissism has been associated with persistent sexual persuasion, coercion, aggression, and rape conducive beliefs. However, the majority of research has concentrated on male samples. The present study (N = 329) investigated narcissism and sexually coercive tactics, varying in severity, in both males and females. Males scored significantly higher on total narcissism and sexual coercion. However, when narcissism was investigated in relation to sexually coercive tactics, it was found that narcissistic females were just as likely to engage in serious and aggressive sexually coercive behaviour. In addition, sexual coercion in males related to more socially desirable aspects of narcissism (adaptive narcissism), whereas in females, sexual coercion was associated with socially toxic components of the construct (maladaptive narcissism). Our results demonstrate that gender differences in narcissism can differ significantly when investigating the impact narcissism has on a specific type of behaviour such as sexual coercion. These new findings contribute to the very little we already know about narcissism in females, suggesting that both sexes should be included in future research on narcissism.     

How Payment for Research Participation Can Be Coercive

The idea that payment for research participation can be coercive appears widespread among research ethics committee members, researchers, and regulatory bodies. Yet analysis of the concept of coercion by philosophers and bioethicists has mostly concluded that payment does not coerce, because coercion necessarily involves threats, not offers. In this article we aim to resolve this disagreement by distinguishing between two distinct but overlapping concepts of coercion. Consent-undermining coercion marks out certain actions as impermissible and certain agreements as unenforceable. By contrast, coercion as subjection indicates a way in which someone’s interests can be partially set back in virtue of being subject to another’s foreign will. While offers of payment do not normally constitute consent-undermining coercion, they do sometimes constitute coercion as subjection. We offer an analysis of coercion as subjection and propose three possible practical responses to worries about the coerciveness of payment.     

Coerced Confessions,Judicial Instruction,and Mock Juror Verdicts1

The present research assessed whether judicial instruction can curb jurors' inappropriate use of coerced-confession evidence. In Experiment 1, subjects read an auto theft trial in which the defendant had confessed on his own initiative (no constraint), after an offer of leniency (positive constraint), or after a threat of punishment (negative constraint). Subjects then received an instruction that simply directed them to ignore a coerced confession (short form), another that additionally defined both positive and negative inducement as coercive and hence unreliable (long form), or no instruction at all. As previously reported (Kassin & Wrightsman, 1980), subjects fully discounted the negatively constrained confession but not the positively induced one which, although judged involuntary, produced a high percentage of guilty verdicts. Neither form of instruction significantly reduced this latter tendency. In Experiment 2, subjects read an assault case involving a voluntary or positively coerced confession and one of four types of instruction. The positive coercion bias was replicated. An instruction that stressed both the unreliability and unfairness of an induced confession decreased voluntariness judgments but failed to lower the conviction rate. The theoretical basis for and practical implications of this phenomenon are discussed, and future research directions are proposed.     

A COMPARISON OF MALE AND FEMALE COLLEGE STUDENTS' EXPERIENCES OF SEXUAL COERCION

Research comparing men's and women's experiences of sexual coercion has typically assessed differences in prevalence rates and risk. We extended this line of research by comparing the contexts of sexual coercion and reactions to sexually coercive experiences in an attempt to understand the meanings that men and women attribute to these events. Participants were 433 randomly selected college students who responded to an anonymous survey. In line with past research, more men than women reported being sexually coercive, and more women than men reported being sexually coerced in the preceding year. There was a great degree of correspondence between men's and women's reports of the contexts within which sexual coercion occurred. According to their reports, sexual coercion occurred primarily within the heterosexual dating context. Compared to men, however, women reported more negative reactions and stronger resistance to the use of sexual coercion. These findings emphasize how comparisons of prevalence rates alone may obscure important differences in the phenomenology of sexually coercive incidents for men and women. Findings are discussed in terms of implications for the development of education and prevention programs and the need to reevaluate current approaches to interpreting prevalence reports.     

Coercion in Intimate Partner Violence: Toward a New Conceptualization

For decades, battered women’s advocates have placed coercive control squarely at the center of their analysis of intimate partner violence. Yet, little work has been done to conceptualize and measure the key construct of coercive control. In this article, we apply French and Raven’s social power model to a conceptualization of coercive control in intimate partner violence relationships. Central elements of the model include: social ecology; setting the stage; coercion involving a demand and a credible threat for noncompliance; surveillance; delivery of threatened consequences; and the victim’s behavioral and emotional response to coercion. These elements occur in spiraling and overlapping sequences to establish an overall situation of coercive control. The implications of this model for theory and practice are discussed.     

Heightened male aggression toward sexualized women following romantic rejection: The mediating role of sex goal activation

Research from a variety of disciplines suggests a positive relationship between Western cultural sexualization and women's likelihood of suffering harm. In the current experiment, 157 young men were romantically rejected by a sexualized or non‐sexualized woman then given the opportunity to blast the woman with loud bursts of white noise. We tested whether the activation of sexual goals in men would mediate the relationship between sexualization and aggressive behavior after romantic rejection. We also tested whether behaving aggressively toward a woman after romantic rejection would increase men's feelings of sexual dominance. Results showed that interacting with a sexualized woman increased men's sex goals. Heightened sex goal activation, in turn, predicted increased aggression after romantic rejection. This result remained significant despite controlling for the effects of trait aggressiveness and negative affect. The findings suggest that heightened sex goal activation may lead men to perpetrate aggression against sexualized women who reject them.

     

Beliefs About the Effects of Alcohol on Involvement in Coercive and Consenting Sexual Activities1

This study examined how an alcohol instructional set (intoxicated or sober) and gender affected subjects' b]eliefs about the negative and positive consequences of engaging in coercive and consenting sexual behaviors, as well as subjects' e]xpressed likelihood of involvement in these activities. Participants who responded to an intoxicated set believed they were more likely to be involved in coercive sexual behaviors than those who responded to sober instructions. Males with an intoxicated set also expected fewer negative and more positive consequences from coercive sex than did other participants. For consenting sexual activities, males (regardless of set) rated negative consequences lower, positive consequences higher, and expressed a stronger likelihood of involvement than did females. Efforts to prevent sexual coercion might be enhanced by including a focus on how beliefs about alcohol may affect the expected consequences and occurrence of these acts.     

Assessment of a sexual coercion prevention program for adolescents

This study's focus is to evaluate a sexual coercion prevention program in adolescents. Using a before-and-after design with both a treatment group (n = 93) and a control group (n = 76), an intervention of seven sessions was completed. Said sessions included such content as conceptualizing sexual freedom, sexual coercion and voluntary consent, analyzing different sexual coercion tactics and the contexts in which they occur, empathy toward the victim, and developing abilities to avoid risky situations. Other risk factors for coercive behavior and sexual victimization are explored as well, such as alcohol use, sexist attitudes and inadequate communication, among others. The intervention's results include a decrease in stereotypical beliefs about the opposite sex and increased empathy toward victims of sexual coercion. These changes were maintained with the passage of time. Also, in the treatment group, a more acute decline was observed in the proportion of young people engaging in sexually coercive behaviors, This article emphasizes the importance, necessity and efficacy of such interventions, and discusses and analyzes possible improvements to the program for its future implementation.     

Legitimized aggression and sexual coercion: Individual differences in cultural spillover

Correlations between aggressive attitudes and sexual coercion have consistently been found in numerous empirical studies across social science disciplines. Extrapolating from sociological research linking indices of legitimate aggression by state to statewide frequencies of rape, we have extended the investigation of legitimate aggression and coercive sexuality to the individual level. The specific purposes of this research were to index the breadth and level of endorsement of legitimized aggression at the individual level and to measure the association between such an index and coercive sexual behavior. These purposes were achieved across the course of three studies in which we created a new dispositional measure, the Proclivity for Legitimized Aggression Questionnaire (PLAQ), and replicated a sociocultural level correlation with coercive sexual behavior (Study 1); assessed the individual differences level construct validity of the PLAQ (Study 2); and tested whether endorsement of items on the PLAQ were related to content‐relevant behaviors (Study 3). The PLAQ was internally consistent, modestly but significantly correlated with a measure of self‐reported coercive sexual behavior, and characterized by promising construct validity. Aggr. Behav. 27:26–43, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Men's heterosocial skill and attitudes toward women as predictors of verbal sexual coercion and forceful rape

This study assessed whether men's heterosocial skill and attitudes toward women are related to verbal and physical sexual coercion in a nonincarcerated population. We predicted that heterosocially skilled men would be more likely than unskilled men to have engaged in verbal sexual coercion, whereas unskilled men would be more likely than skilled men to have engaged in physical sexual coercion (i.e., forceful rape). We expected an interaction, with this pattern holding only for men who accepted traditional gender roles or male sexual dominance; men who did not accept these attitudes were expected to be unlikely to have engaged in either verbal or physical coercion. To identify sexually coercive men, we administered questionnaires to 1152 male introductory psychology students. They completed anonymous self-report measures of (a) heterosocial skill, (b) attitudes toward women, and (c) involvement with verbal and physical sexual coercion. Results showed that heterosocially skilled men were more likely than unskilled men to have engaged in verbal sexual coercion, but heterosocial skill was unrelated to forceful rape. Men who accepted traditional gender roles or male sexual dominance were more likely than other men to have engaged in both verbal sexual coercion and forceful rape. There were no interactions. Theoretical issues and treatment implications are discussed.The authors wish to thank Gayla Goolsby, Trudi Zaplac, Diane Collinge, Shelley Davis, Gina Benedicto, and DiAnne Poehl. This paper is based on the second author's Senior Honors Thesis, done as part of the Texas A&M University Undergraduate Fellows Program, which provided funding.     

Strategies and Dispositional Correlates of Sexual Coercion Perpetrated by Women: An Exploratory Investigation

This research tests whether theoretical constructs typically associated with male perpetrators of sexual coercion are predictive of women who perpetrate sexual coercion. We administered a questionnaire that contained measures of sexual experience, social dominance, ambivalent sexism, sex roles, attitudes toward sexual harassment, and lovestyle approaches toward intimate relationships to a sample of women undergraduates. Results found 18% of women to report engaging in sexually coercive behaviors. Coercive women exhibited higher tolerance of sexual harassment, and were significantly higher in femininity than noncoercive women. Coercive women were also found to embrace a ludic (manipulative, game-playing approach toward love) lovestyle significantly more than noncoercive women, while pragma (a logical approach toward love) was negatively associated with coercion. Lastly, a significant difference was found between coercive and noncoercive women and self-reported victimization. Eighty-one percent of women who reported using coercive strategies in their relationships also reported having been sexually victimized.