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Rapist Development: An Investigation of Rapists’ Attitudes Toward Women and Parental Style
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by Courtney A. Meyer - Lock Haven University
More researchers are investigating factors that lead
people to rape, including factors involving perceptions of women
or childhood experiences (e.g., Scott & Tetreault, 1987). Despite
the fact that childhood experiences influence perceptions of women,
there is no research on their relation. We hypothesized that rapists
would report more negative parental interactions than other types
of criminals. In a between subjects, quasi-experiment, convicted
rapists and robbers completed the Attitudes Toward Women Scale
(Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1973), Measurement of Parental Style
(Parker et al., 1997), and the Balanced Inventory of Desirable
Responding (Paulhus, 1991). Rapists reported higher levels of abuse,
indifference, and overcontrol than robbers, but there was no
difference in attitudes toward women. Our results also revealed
rapists had fewer sisters than robbers. Future research should focus
on rapists’ family constellation as a whole.
Spring 2011 | Psi Chi Journal of Undergraduate Research (Vol. 16, No. 1, p. 43), published by Psi Chi, The International Honor Society in Psychology (Chattanooga, TN). Copyright, 2011, Psi Chi, The International Honor Society in Psychology. All rights reserved.