FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - New research from the University of Arkansas shows that men who believe a rape victim has resisted and then relented to sexual pressure in the past view the victim as more sexually responsive to her rapist.

Further, the UA research finds that men who perceive a woman as having been sexually promiscuous in the past consider her attacker more aggressive, threatening and harmful.

Both findings stem from a series of experiments in which UA psychologists attempted to identify how preconceptions about a woman’s sexual history, combined with men’s attitudes about women, sex and masculinity, affect public perception of victims, perpetrators and sexual assault as a whole.

"How people perceive sexual assault and how they attribute blame can have a big impact on those involved," said Jeffrey Lohr, professor of psychology. "These are the issues that get hashed out every day in court rooms - the issues that ultimately influence juries and that may determine the treatment that victims and perpetrators receive."

To investigate the impact of attitude and perception, Lohr and doctoral student Lisa Parker developed a study that gathered 82 college-age men to listen to an audio-taped scenario in which actors depict a violent date rape. Parker and Lohr divided the tape into ten intervals. At the conclusion of each interval, the researchers paused the tape and asked subjects to complete a rating form.

On a one to seven scale, subjects evaluated the man according to how much harm he had caused, his level of aggression and the threat he posed to the woman. Subjects also rated the woman according to her sexual responsiveness and her responsibility for the situation.

Because the scenario begins fairly innocently and gradually escalates to violence, Parker and Lohr expected subjects to rate the man progressively more harmful, aggressive and threatening as the tape proceeded while rating the woman progressively less responsive or responsible. That hypothesis held true for subjects who listened to the tape without prior knowledge of the victim’s sexual history. But these men constituted only one of four subject groups.

The other three subject groups all received information about the victim before listening to the tape. Parker and Lohr told one group that the victim had a history of sexual promiscuity. They informed the second group that the victim had displayed token resistance in the past - that she had repeatedly said "no" to sexual advances but with the intent of eventually giving in. The last group heard that the victim had a history of both sexual promiscuity and token resistance.

The ratings from these three groups each differed from the ratings of the control group. The men who considered the woman both promiscuous and inclined toward token resistance rated the perpetrator less aggressive, threatening or harmful. Those who perceived the victim as only sexually promiscuous rated the perpetrator more aggressive, threatening and harmful.

"They assumed that a woman who often says 'yes’ must really mean it when she says 'no,’" Parker suggested.

But Parker and Lohr were most puzzled to find that the second group - who believed the victim had displayed token resistance in the past - rated the woman rather than the perpetrator differently. This group considered her more sexually responsive to her attacker.

"This is an important result," Parker said. "This tells us that even when the victim is genuinely resisting, men who know her history hold it against her. They perceive her resistance as token."

Parker says it is the perception of token resistance - not necessarily the fact of it - that most jeopardizes a woman, whether she’s facing her attacker or a room full of jurors. In part, that’s because public perception of token resistance is disproportionate to its occurrence. Past studies have shown that less than 5 percent of women display token resistance, but up to 60 percent of men believe that women routinely engage in it.

Parker believes this skewed perception arises from a number of sources. One such source is popular entertainment - movies, novels and television shows that depict women defending against a man’s advances until he takes charge and overpowers them, after which the women are portrayed as content and sexually gratified. What’s ironic is that these often represent the stories most celebrated by women - "Gone with the Wind," for example, or the entire genre of romance fiction.

"That’s part of the miscommunication between men and women - the fact that women romanticize that kind of behavior," Parker explained. "Those depictions play into the traditional social roles that we think we have to embody. Women defend their purity. Men assert their desire and strength. The fact is, those roles are outdated, and we shouldn’t be trying to maintain them."

According to Parker, healthy relationships also can be a source of miscommunication. A boyfriend who is rebuffed for suggesting greater sexual intimacy may not understand why his girlfriend later acquiesces. Without a frank discussion, he may assume that she was exhibiting token resistance when, in fact, she had justifiable reasons for changing her mind. She may have been waiting until they attained greater emotional intimacy or until she overcame her own inhibitions.

Such misunderstandings intensify when men adopt callous attitudes toward women and sex or when they attempt to embody outdated social roles by exhibiting excessively masculine qualities. Before listening to the audio tapes, each of Parker and Lohr’s subjects completed four self-report questionnaires, designed to assess hyper-masculinity, acceptance of rape myths, level of psychopathy and the overall honesty of their responses.

The researchers found a strong correlation between callous sexual beliefs and acceptance of rape myths. They also found that men who scored high on psychopathy also scored high on the hyper-masculinity scale.

"By the time men reach college, it’s almost too late. At that point we’re not talking about prevention of rape myths and callous attitudes. We’re talking about rehabilitation," Lohr said. "The best time to educate people is probably early puberty. We need to teach kids how to relate to the opposite sex on a level other than dominance and the exercise of power."

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NOTE: Transcripts of the audio tape and copies of the rating form are available upon request. Contact Allison Hogge at (479)575-5555 or alhogge@uark.edu.