Kaitlin Boyle

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Associate Professor at University of South Carolina

Violence against women and mental illness are two of the most pressing issues in higher education. Despite decades of research, it is not entirely clear how subjective perceptions of victimization events shape distress. The current study integrates trauma perspectives and a symbolic interactionist approach to demonstrate how identity disruption and...

When establishing the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault, President Obama reminded universities of their obligation to report accurate rape statistics to the Department of Education. Research has not determined, on a national scale, what factors explain variation in (under)reporting. Using data from 413 top universities’...

Unwanted sexual experiences are seldom acknowledged as “rape.” These are identity-threatening events that cause negative affect and cognitive confusion. According to affect control theory, such events produce deflection that is resolved through restorative acts, redefinition of behavior, or modification or redefinition of identities. Since deflecti...

Rape on the college campus has gained increasing amounts of attention in higher education, mainstream news, and public policy. The prevalence rates of rape are especially high among students who frequent campus parties, such as those hosted by fraternities. Researchers have described this increased risk by focusing on individual attitudes and behav...

Heavy drinking and sexual assault are prevalent among college students who attend parties hosted by fraternities and athletic teams, and accusations often produce victim blaming and disbelief. We provide a symbolic interactionist explanation of how subculturally held sentiments shape students’ perceptions. We find that fraternity or athletic team p...

Importance Barriers to divorce and reproductive health care can threaten the health and safety of pregnant and recently pregnant females. Objective To examine state laws about divorce, reproductive health care (access to contraception, family planning services, and abortion), and pregnancy-associated homicide rates in US states over a 4-year perio...

Using Agnew’s (1992) general strain theory (GST), we assess the connection between men’s strained masculinity (stress at subordination to women scenarios), anger produced by strained masculinity, and endorsing friends’ harassment and abuse of women. In a convenience sample of 859 men aged 18 to 32, men who report greater strain and anger in respons...

Perceptions of law enforcement shape a willingness to report crime and are particularly important for sex crimes and among groups oppressed or neglected by the legal system. We examine three types of perceptions of justice—the fairness of outcomes (distributive), procedures (procedural), and victim treatment (interpersonal). We expect each measure...

Various mass shooters have explained their violent actions as a response to failing at dominant forms of masculinity, including rejection from women and negative social comparisons to other men. The affect control theory of self (ACT-Self) posits that interactions that violate one's sense of self cause inauthenticity. This disequilibrium motivates...

Men are overrepresented in criminal offending, arrest, and incarceration rates, resulting in a gender gap in crime data. I use the mathematical structure and propositions of affect control theory to understand how the symbolic meanings society holds for gender and crime relate to this observed difference in women’s and men’s offending. While crimin...

Violence against Black women has been overshadowed by gender-based violence against white women and police violence against Black men. We account for how the intersection of racism and sexism produce unique vulnerabilities for Black women in our examination of their homicide victimization committed by Black and white men (Supplementary Homicide Rep...

There is a proliferation of research on the effects of microaggressions among undergraduate students and in the workplace. However, scholars have not focused on biased interactions among graduate and law students, their capacity to create or exacerbate health inequities, and the types of support that might mitigate these effects. In two studies, we...

Social psychological theories provide useful tools for identifying interpretive processes that affect individual mental health outcomes. In this paper, we use the affect control theory of self (ACT-Self) to examine the relationship between depressive symptoms and global feelings about the self—self-sentiments—that are evoked by the constellation of...

“Hooking up” encompasses an array of definitions, embodies a multitude of implications, and is an almost unavoidable part of college life. The present study applies identity theory to patterns of casual sex and dating at college, more predominantly known as hookup culture, to examine how the “partier” identity shapes drinking, partying, and hooking...

Previous literature suggests that Democratic candidates of color receive less support than white Democrats on Election Day. It has been suggested that this reduced support is due to voters’ ideological perceptions of people of color being more liberal than whites, which translates into perceptions of candidates. However, these studies are frequentl...

Using an original self-report survey of 18- to 30-year-old men, this study aims to understand gendered processes underlying men’s attitudes toward guns and aggressive behavior through two types of threats. We find that acceptance threat, a threat to an individual man’s sense of masculinity, and status threat, the belief that societal changes disadv...

Despite a growing body of work on sexual harassment among college students, little work has examined predictors of sexual harassment specifically among graduate students. This study aims to address this gap in the literature by using data from 490 female graduate students at a large, public university. Based on a feminist routine activity theory ap...

“Victim” and “survivor” identities are central to discourses on sexual victimization. Activist and academic discourses associate the former with weakness and latter with strength, while centering images and experiences of white women. Yet, little research has explored who identifies as “victims”/“survivors” or how these identities relate to distres...

The current study aims to shed light on how masculinity threat and challenges from women translate into fantasies of mass and gender-based violence. These attitudes are evident among some self-proclaimed “incels,” who blame social liberalism, feminism, and sexually active men for their rejection from women. We developed a measure of “incel” traits,...

There is a rich research literature linking interpersonal violence to mental health disorders among undergraduate students. However, scholars know less about the prevalence and consequences of victimization among students enrolled in postbaccalaureate programs. Graduate and law students are uniquely vulnerable in their dependence on programs for fi...

Decades of research demonstrate that women frequently avoid the label “rape” when reflecting on nonconsensual sexual experiences. The current study focuses on self-labels to further understand the relationship between assault characteristics, emotion, mental health, and women’s labeling of sexual assault. We argue that emotions produced by various...

Decades of research demonstrate that women frequently avoid the label "rape" when reflecting on nonconsensual sexual experiences. The current study focuses on self-labels to further understand the relationship between assault characteristics, emotion, mental health, and women's labeling of sexual assault. We argue that emotions produced by various...

In 2016, Hillary Clinton was the first woman to gain the presidential nomination from a major political party in the United States, yet she was unsuccessful. The current study explores barriers to being elected as president for women generally and Hillary Clinton specifically. Using the propositions and tools of affect control theory, we demonstrat...

The current study tests the affect control theory of self, a mathematical theory that demonstrates a core social psychological principle: individuals strive for a stable and coherent self through identity selection and behavior. In the affect control theory of self, the self is conceptualized as self-sentiments, which are measured on three dimensio...

Research has shown that victims of sexual assault are at a significant risk of revictimization. We use routine activity theory to predict how sexual victimization in adolescence relates to depression, substance use, and ultimately revictimization as a young adult. We frame our research within routine activity theory and predict that sexual victimiz...