RAPE MYTHS AS NEUTRALIZING COGNITIONS - EVIDENCE FOR A CAUSAL IMPACT OF ANTI-VICTIM ATTITUDES ON MENS SELF-REPORTED LIKELIHOOD OF RAPING

Men's rape myth acceptance (RMA; prejudiced beliefs that serve to exon erate the rapist and blame the victim) has been shown to correlate pos itively with self-reported rape proclivity (RP). To explore the causal pathway underlying this correlation, two experiments were conducted i n which the relative cognitive accessibility of RMA and RP was varied. Male students were asked to report their RP in the context of a scale assessing attraction toward sexual aggression (Experiment 1) or in re sponse to five realistic date-rape scenarios (Experiment 2), either be fore or after they filled out a 20-item RMA scale. In both studies, th e correlation of RMA and RP was significantly greater in the after tha n in the before condition, suggesting that the belief in rape myths ha s a causal influence on men's proclivity to rape. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.