Gender differences in attributional reasoning about rape during actual conversation

Abstract

Examined how people attribute responsibility for cases of rape. The authors argue that this is an important area of research because such attributions will affect whether victims, taking advice from those around them, will ever report the crime. Three studies conducted with male and female college students tested whether the L. Calhoun et al (1976) gender differences would emerge in an attributional task involving a rape when Ss were asked to talk about, rather than answer questions on, a rape scenario. The authors also examined whether these differences would specifically arise from differences in consensus, distinctiveness, consistency, and foreseeability as postulated by H. H. Kelley's (1967) attributional model. Results show that males and females tend to differentially evoke Kelley's variables in actual conversations about alleged rape, with males making more negative attributions to characteristics of the victim than females. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)