Content uploaded by Neil M Malamuth
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Abstract
In this second article of a two‐part series, data from three separate studies are presented supporting the reliability, discriminant, and construct validity of the Attraction to Sexual Aggression (ASA) scale. Higher scores on this scale were associated with attitudes supporting aggression against women, affective reactions to media portrayals of forced sex, physiological and self‐reported sexual arousal, hostility toward women, dominance motives, and antisocial personality characteristics. Based on data with low sexual aggressors, higher ASA scores were associated with greater similarity (on relevant dimensions) to high sexual aggressors, suggesting that ASA may help identify potentially sexually aggressive men at “risk” for future sexual coercion. However, caution in the use of such identification is urged. Finally, it is concluded that although the data support the usefulness of earlier work with self‐reported likelihood measures, the use of ASA is an improvement in this line of research. Directions for future development of this scale and research are also discussed.
... In multiple regression analyses, however, this scale failed to contribute independently to predicting sexual aggression, because dominance and hatred toward women accounted for its variance. In further analyses of these data, Malamuth (1989) found that the self-reported proclivity to engage in forced sex and to rape was significantly correlated with the self-reported proclivity to rob and murder. Malamuth's (1989) Attraction to Sexual Aggression Scale correlated with Eysenck's Psychoticism scale, which in turn was related in two separate samples to interest in bondage and of whipping/spanking. ...
... In further analyses of these data, Malamuth (1989) found that the self-reported proclivity to engage in forced sex and to rape was significantly correlated with the self-reported proclivity to rob and murder. Malamuth's (1989) Attraction to Sexual Aggression Scale correlated with Eysenck's Psychoticism scale, which in turn was related in two separate samples to interest in bondage and of whipping/spanking. Finally, Lisak and Roth (1988) found that college men who reported having been sexually aggressive rated themselves as more impulsive than did nonaggressive men and also reported less respect for society's rules. ...
... For instance, differential arousal patterns to specific sexual/aggressive stimuli have discriminated rapists from nonrapists and differentiated among rapists (Abel et al., 1977;Barbaree, Marshall, & Lanthier, 1979;Quinsey, Chaplin, & Upfold, 1984). Moreover, more recent studies have provided evidence that deviant sexual arousal patterns are an important identifier of sexually coercive men in noncriminal samples (Malamuth, 1986(Malamuth, , 1989Malamuth, Check, & Briere, 1986). Finally, phallometrically measured sexual interest in nonsexual violence has been found to be a predictor of both sexual and violent offense recidivism (Rice, Harris, & Quinsey, 1990). ...
Considerable evidence has amassed in studies of both nonoffender and offender samples that demonstrates both that sexual aggression is determined by a multiplicity of variables and that convicted sexual offenders are markedly heterogeneous (Knight, Rosenberg, & Schneider, 1985; Malamuth, 1986). Attempts both to identify sexually coercive men in normal samples and to assess etiology, concurrent adaptation, treatment efficacy, and recidivism for convicted sexually aggressive offenders have also suggested that the critical determining components of sexual aggression interact in complex ways. The purpose of this article is to survey both the offender and nonoffender sexual aggression research for evidence about which dimensions should be included in multivariate models that attempt to discriminate rapists from nonrapists, to identify subgroups among rapists, or to enhance the efficiency of dispositional decisions about these offenders.
... For other sociocultural theorists, the general violence hypothesis is valuable but incomplete to explain rape and sexual assault. A popular hypothesis has been the role of pornography (Dworkin, 1981;Malamuth, 1989;Malamuth, Addison, & Koss, 2000). Well before the advent and proliferation of pornographic internet websites, researchers were concerned about the role of the pornography industry and the proliferation of pornographic material on rape and sexual assault. ...
... In mid 1980s, in the midst of the feminist movements and their fight against rape culture, Neil M. Malamuth, a Professor of psychology at the University of California Los Angeles surveyed a group of 367 male undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory psychology class. The survey consisted of a series of questions aiming to assess their attraction to a series of conventional and unconventional sexual activities, deviant sex and sexual aggression, which included rape (Malamuth, Check, & Briere, 1986;Malamuth, 1989). In total, 288 students returned questionnaires that provided complete data to all questions included in the survey. ...
... Such propensity refers to relatively stable and fixed individual differences that increase someone's likelihood of perpetrating a sexual offense. As Malamuth's (1989) findings show, not all young adult men secretly desire or wish they could rape or coerce someone into sex. There are individual differences associated with the perpetration of sexual offending and such differences have been approached through the idea of individual propensity for sexual offending. ...
Over the years, the societal construction of the sex offender has changed. This evolution has had an impact on the portrayal of perpetrators’ motivation and factors explaining their behavior. Theoretical developments have challenged such portrayals based on myths, misconceptions, and broad generalizations. This chapter provides an overview of theories and explanatory models of sexual offending. This theoretical development is uneven and fragmented and too often proposed explanatory models have not received rigorous empirical verifications. Instead, they have been accepted at face value. Of importance, the theoretical development of sexual offending has left unaccounted key criminogenic factors that are important contributors to antisocial and criminal behavior. The chapter highlights some key areas where future theoretical developments be focused on for a more comprehensive explanation of sexual offending.
... Moreover, self-reported arousal at thinking about forcible sex correlated reliably with both self-reported sexual aggression and with the dominance motivation scales, supporting the link between dominance and sexuality. That these responses were valid and not an artifact of the self-report format was indicated by a strong correlation between the self-report measure of arousal (a precursor of the Attractiveness of Sexual Aggression [ASA] scale; Malamuth, 1989aMalamuth, , 1989b and the amount of penile tumescence that occurred while the participant read an account of a rape. ...
... Participants completed both the LSH scale (Pryor, 1987) and the ASA scale (Malamuth, 1989a(Malamuth, , 1989b following the completion of the pronunciation task. The LSH scale consists of 10 scenarios in which the participant is to imagine he has a kind of leverage or control over an attractive woman and then estimates the likelihood (from 1, not at all likely, to 5, very likely) that he would take advantage of this opportunity to obtain sexual favors from the woman. ...
One characteristic of men who sexually harass is that they are not aware that their actions are inappropriate or a misuse of their power (L. F. Fitzgerald, 1993a). We investigated the existence and automaticity of a mental association between the concepts of power and sex, and its consequences for sexual harassment tendencies. Using a subliminal priming paradigm, Experiment 1 demonstrated an automatic link between power and sex, and only for men high in the likelihood to sexually harass or aggress. In Experiment 2, male participants were unobtrusively primed with either power-related or neutral stimuli. For men likely to sexually aggress, but not other participants, attraction ratings of a female confederate were significantly higher in the power priming than the neutral priming condition.
... In particular, a study investigating an automatic power-sex association (Bargh, Raymond, Pryor, & Strack, 1995) showed that subliminal priming of power-related words (e.g., boss) facilitated pronunciation of sexrelated words (e.g., bed), suggesting that power priming rendered the sex concept more accessible. This relationship, however, only held for men who were high in attraction to sexual aggression (Malamuth, 1989), presumably because only for them did an association of power and sex exist. ...
Four studies suggest that priming may yield directionally different effects on social perception and behavior if perceptual and behavioral experiences with the stimulus diverge. This seems true for sex and aggression: Men are more likely to behave aggressively than women, whereas women are more likely to perceive aggressive behavior than men. Using a sequential priming paradigm, Study 1 demonstrates that a basic semantic link between sex and aggression exists for both genders. This link, however, has opposing behavioral and perceptual consequences for men and women. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrate that sex priming facilitates aggressive behavior only for men. Study 4 shows that only women perceive the ambiguously aggressive behavior of a male target person as more aggressive after sex priming. Thus, the perceptual and behavioral responses to sex priming are consistent with the experiences men and women typically have with sex and aggression.
... Interpersonal sensitivity, depression, paranoid thinking, and psychoticism are risk factors for Internet sex addiction [53,54], while the duration of pornographic sites usage is a risk factor for the development of various psychological symptoms in heterosexual men [10,17,18,46]. Numerous differences have been observed among men when it comes to accepting sexually explicit material [4,6,9,30,52]. However, certain regularities can be noticed. ...
Authors analyzed the problematic use of pornographic websites and Internet sex addiction in representative samples of respondents from different age groups including 2948 respondents from Serbia and 1486 from Montenegro. In this study, the authors focused on researching problematic and addictive behavior related to Internet sex in Serbia and Montenegro. They concluded that of all the addictions, sex addiction is the most difficult to control because it is a complex mixture of biological, psychological, cultural, and family factors, a combination that creates and intensifies compulsive sexual behaviors and indicates that such behaviors are almost impossible to resist even though sex addiction produces many negative consequences in various spheres of life.
... Zajedniĉki faktor rizika za patološko kockanje, alkohol, heroin i kokain je onaj koji stimuliše neurobiološke procese, posebno nagraĊivanje mozga dopaminom (Betz et al., 2000;Daigle et al., 1988;Hyman, 1994;Wise, 1996). Zapaţene su razlike meĊu muškarcima u prihvatanju seksualno eksplicitnog materijala (Cooper, 1987;Davis & Bauserman, 1993;Griffiths, 1998;Malamuth, 1989;Yen et al., 2007). Ipak se mogu uoĉiti izvjesne pravilnosti. ...
U ovoj studiji istraživana je povezanost porodičnih faktora rizika sa nastankom i razvojem zavisnosti od psihoaktivnih supstanci i bihevioralnih zavisnosti na reprezentativnim uzorcima od 3003 ispitanika iz Srbije i 1489 ispitanika iz Crne Gore. Pored opštih pitanja o socijalno-demografskim i socijalno-ekonomskim obilježjima, u istraživanju je korišćen inventar od 11 upitnika za 11 bihevioralnih zavisnosti sa ukupno 282 pitanja. U istraživanje su uključeni sledeći faktori rizika: nikotinizam i alkoholizam jednog ili oba roditelja, razdvajanje i razvod roditelja, duševna bolest, prostitucija, samoubistvo, ubistvo i kriminaltet među članovima roditeljskih porodica, preterana strogost, popustljivost, prezaštićivanje i odbacivanje od strane oca, preterana strogost, popustljivost, prezaštićivanje i odbacivanje od strane majke, ozbiljni sukobi sa jednim ili oba roditelja zbog nerazumevanja, zanemarivanje ili zlostavljanje ispitanika od strane jednog ili oba roditelja.
Od psihoaktivnih supstanci u istraživanje smo uključili: zavisnost od duvana, zavisnost od alkohola, zavisnost od marihuane, zavisnost od opijata i zavisnost od psihostimulansa, a od bihevioralnih zavisnosti: zavisnost od video-igrica, zavisnost od televizije, zavisnost od Fejsbuka, zavisnost od ljubavnog partnera, zavisnost od rada, zavisnost od hrane, zavisnost od Interneta, zavisnost od seksa, zavisnost od mobilnih telefona, zavisnost od kocke i zavisnost od Internet seksa.
U istraživanju su primenjeni t test i binarna logistička regresija. Nađena je visoka ili vrlo visoka povezanost između najvećeg broja porodičnih faktora rizika i zavisnosti od psihoaktivnih supstanci, odnosno bihevioralnih zavisnosti.
... The primary aim of present project was to test certain hypotheses from the fields of evolutionary psychology, psychopathology, sexology and parasitology. Therefore, the electronic survey consisted of 5 already published questionnaires studying various facets of human sexuality, such as The Hurlbert Index of Sexual Narcissism (Hurlbert, 1994), the Sexual Attitude Scale SOI-R (Penke and 2008), the Three-Domain Disgust Scale (Tybur, 2009), the International Personality Item Pool -Dominance scale (IPIP) (Goldberg, 1999;Goldberg et al., 2006), and the Attraction to sexual aggression scale, (Malamuth and 1989) modified and supplemented with questions to cover a broader spectrum of sexual preferences and sexual behavior. The survey also contained an anamnestic questionnaire collecting various socioeconomic, demographic, health related, epidemiologic, and psychological data and three projective psychological tests. ...
Infection by the parasite Toxoplasma , which affects about 33% of world population, is associated with increased risk of several mental health disorders, the most strongly with schizophrenia. It is unknown whether toxoplasmosis really plays a substantial role in the etiopathogenesis of these disorders and whether schizophrenia is associated with this infection the most strongly, or whether this association has just been the most intensively studied for historical reasons. We used the data from 3,440 and 7,800 subjects tested for toxoplasmosis and borreliosis, respectively, who took part in an internet survey, for searching in the associations of these infections with 22 mental health disorders and other indices of impaired mental health. The typical symptom associated with toxoplasmosis was anxiety, and the typical toxoplasmosis-associated disorders were autism (OR=4.86), schizophrenia (OR=3.34), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (OR=3.02), Asperger syndrome (OR=2.49), antisocial personality disorder (OR=1.81), OCD (OR=1.69), and anxiety disorder (OR=1.57). Borreliosis was associated only with symptoms of depression and with major depression (OR=1.65). The negative effects of borreliosis were detectable only in the Toxoplasma -infected subjects. Toxoplasmosis could play a substantial role in the etiopathogenesis of mental health disorders and its association with schizophrenia is the second strongest association, after autism.
The assessment of individuals who rape is a fundamental component of risk management and effective rehabilitation. Rapists are an extremely heterogeneous offender group and important differences between rapists and other sexual offenders have been noted. Such diversity underscores the importance of assessment but also poses a significant challenge to evaluators who work with this type of sexual offender. There are a number of different areas that are relevant when assessing rapists in addition to several different methodologies for gathering relevant information. This chapter reviews the methodological issues associated with common assessment methods used with rapists, including nosological diagnoses, risk to reoffend, and the identification of treatment need.
Developed, on the basis of responses from 608 undergraduate students to the 33-item Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, three short forms of 11, 12, and 13 items. The psychometric characteristics of these three forms and three other short forms developed by Strahan and Gerbasi (1972) were investigated and comparisons made. Results, in the form of internal consistency reliability, item factor loadings, short form with Marlowe-Crowne total scale correlations, and correlations between Marlowe-Crowne short forms and the Edwards Social Desirability Scale, indicate that psychometrically sound short forms can be constructed. Comparisons made between the short forms examined in this investigation suggest the 13-item form as a viable substitute for the regular 33-item Marlowe-Crowne scale.
Developed a survey capable of reflecting hidden cases of rape and of documenting a dimensional view of sexual aggression/sexual victimization. This survey examines degrees of coercion used or experienced in sexual activity. Results obtained from 3,862 university students support a dimensional view. The viability of a survey approach to sample selection for future rape research is discussed. (4 ref)
This two‐phase experiment was conducted in response to recent ethical concerns about the possible antisocial effects of exposing research subjects to pornographic rape portrayals. In Phase 1, subjects were randomly assigned to read either an “acquaintance” rape depiction, a “stranger” rape depiction, or to read control materials. Subjects who read the rape depictions were then given a rape debriefing. This debriefing included a communication about the undesirable desensitizing effects of pairing sexual violence with other highly explicit and pleasing sexual stimuli. It was also designed to dispel a number of myths about rape. Half of the subjects who read the control materials were also given the rape debriefing, whereas the other half were given a control debriefing. This design enabled the assessment of the independent and interactive effects of the rape depictions and of the rape debriefing (although ethical considerations did not enable the use of a fully crossed factorial design). In Phase 2, subjects were presented with a number of newspaper articles (in which a newspaper report of a rape was embedded) and asked to give their opinions. The results indicated that the rape debriefing generally increased subjects' perceptions of pornography as a cause of rape. Subjects in the rape debriefing conditions also gave the rapist in the newspaper report a higher sentence, and saw the rape victim as less responsible, than did subjects in the control conditions. This latter effect, however, only occurred under conditions where subjects had earlier been exposed to an example of a rape depiction which was relevant to both the rape myths discussed in the rape debriefing and the newspaper report of the rape. These data suggest that participation in pornography experiments employing pornographic rape depictions can have an educational impact on subjects' postexperimental attitudes, if the debriefing is appropriately constructed to dispel any rape myths that may be portrayed in the rape depictions.
Data are presented concerning the ethics of exposing undergraduate students to pornographic rape portrayals followed by a debriefing designed to dispel a number of rape myths. One hundred fifty males and females were randomly assigned to read pornographic stories. Some of these depicted a rape, whereas others depicted mutually consenting intercourse. Afterwards, those exposed to the rape version were given a debriefing which included statements concerning the true horror of rape and the existence of rape myths. About 10 days later, a “Public Survey” ostensibly conducted by a local committee of citizens was given to subjects in their classes. A postexperimental questionnaire confirmed that participants were not aware that this survey was related to the earlier phase of the research. As part of the survey, subjects were presented with actual newspaper articles about which their opinions were solicited. One of these articles, the dependent measure of the study, concerned rape. Subjects indicated their reactions to this article and their opinions about the general causes of rape. The results indicated that those exposed to the rape depictions followed by a “rape debriefing” were less accepting of certain rape myths than subjects exposed to mutually consenting intercourse depictions. Implications of the data for future research in this area are discussed both in terms of work focusing on the potential antisocial impact of violent pornography and of research specifically designed to identify the conditions most likely to change acceptance of rape myths.
Analysis of the causes of male violence against women requires consideration of the interaction among three types of factors—cultural factors that affect members of the society in general, the psychological makeup of individuals who are more likely to commit such acts of violence, and situational factors that may suppress or trigger the actual expression of aggressive responses. This chapter presents the data from a research program that is designed particularly to investigate cultural and individual causes of aggression against women, although some attention has also been given to situational factors. The primary focus of the research has been on violent inclinations in the general population rather than on individuals who were arrested for crimes such as rape. It is anticipated, however, that the findings also shed some light on the roots of aggressive acts that come to the attention of legal and mental health agencies.
• The erections of rapists and nonrapists were measured during audio descriptions of rape and nonrape sexual scenes. On the basis of their erection measures, rapists were separated from nonrapists in that the former developed erections to rape descriptions while the latter did not. The method also discriminated those rapists with the highest frequency of rape, those who had injured their victim, and those who chose children as victims.
The development of a sexual behavior scale for males is described. The final scale consists of 21 classes of heterosexual behavior which form a cumulative, ordinal scale. This scale can be used as a hierarchy in desensitization therapy, or it can be applied to the assessment of behavior change resulting from therapy. A short 10 item form of the scale which correlates ·979 with the total scale is available as well.
The purpose of this study was to focus attention on distinctive features of female college student drug use in general and marijuana use in particular. A basic assumption underlying this research was that with recent depolarization of many sex-typed role conceptions we can expect that many women will engage in behavior which previously was predominantly associated with males. The use of marijuana, as well as various other drugs, by women is one such area where this change may be occurring. The results indicate that the gap in marijuana useage patterns between females and males has substantially narrowed. Female marijuana users were also found to use other drugs quite extensively, to have a significant number of friends who use marijuana, and to increase thier use of other drugs after having first used marijuana. The findings also elaborate on factors perceived as influential among both users and nonusers in the decision to use, continue using, and discontinuing the use of marijuana.