THE EFFECT OF SEXUAL AROUSAL ON EXPECTATIONS OF SEXUAL FORCEFULNESS

Decisions to commit crimes are often made under the influence of visce ral feelings such as anger or sexual arousal. Rational choice models o f offender decision-making assume that individuals carl anticipate, in an unaroused state, their responses to such visceral feelings. This a ssumption is tested in an experiment in which sexually aroused and non aroused males predict their own behavior in a date rape scenario. Arou sed and nonaroused participants were asked a battery of questions desi gned to measure their perceptions of the costs and benefits of acting in a sexually aggressive manner, their level of arousal, and a probabi listic prediction as to how aggressively they would act in the conditi ons described in the scenario, The authors find that sexual arousal do es increase subjects' expectations of their own sexual aggressiveness and that this impact is not mediated by perceptions of the costs or be nefits of such aggression.