Faculty of Humanities
School of Social Sciences
Department of Psychology
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
International literature suggests that a large proportion of the male population tends to show some proclivity toward exerting sexual violence against women. A recent cross-cultural study involving British, German and African participants, showed that endorsement of rape myths (RMA) correlates highly with rape proclivity (RP).
This study also showed that, in acquaintance rape situations, anticipated enjoyment of sexual dominance mediates the relationship between RMA and RP, whereas anticipated sexual arousal does not. This finding suggests that rape myths may be driven more by the desire to demonstrate ‘male power/dominance’ over the victim than a desire for sexual satisfaction.
In order to examine further the psychological underpinnings of rape proclivity, a study was conducted to determine the impact of sexist attitudes (i.e. both hostile sexism and benevolent sexism) on the relationship between RMA, RP and Victim-Perpetrator Blaming Attitudes using a sample of 184 young South African males aged between 18 and 22 years.
Overall, across all the four sub-samples (Caucasians, blacks, Indian, coloured and Chinese), the results showed high levels of endorsement of rape myths and strong victim-blaming attitudes, particularly among participants who also exhibited hostile sexist attitudes than among benevolent sexists. RP correlated positively with RMA, Hostile Sexism (but not with Benevolent Sexism), and Victim-blaming attitudes.
These results point to the possible existence of ‘male psyche’ that is characterized by a strong desire among many young men to use sex as a tool for exerting their power and control over women, and, the tendency to absolve themselves of any blame for what happens in acquaintance rape situations.
The results have important and far-reaching implications for the design of effective intervention programmes intended to address sexual violence by men against women in our society. For example, in many countries around the world, sex offender treatment programmes tend to focus on strategies for controlling and directing sexual arousal rather than addressing the culturally acquired ‘cognitive distortions’ regarding sexual behaviour of men towards women.
In particular, eliminating rape myths, sexist attitudes and a tendency to blame the victim are critical elements that must be included in programmes aimed at addressing the high incidence of acquaintance rape in our society.
Prof P Chiroro
Psychology
+27 (0) 12 420 2653
patrick.chiroro@up.ac.za
This project grapples with understanding hope as a psychological phenomenon within a South African context, and from a gender perspective by means of constructing a hope-scale aimed at South Africans.
The view of hope as a psychological construct is based on a particular view that hope consists of three cognitive components namely: goal, pathway and agency thoughts. A number of students, male and female, were asked to describe what hope means to them in a South African context.
Content analysis was used to interpret the responses. Themes were identified which was further divided into sub-themes. This information was used to generate a number of items focusing on evaluating hope. A rating scale was developed to assess the written responses of the sample.
Item response analysis was used to test the dimensionality of scales and to construct measures to use in-group comparisons. Language and gender groups were compared on personal hope measures and situational hope (which refers to hope within the SA situation).
Males scored slightly lower on both hope dimensions and African language speakers scored higher than either Afrikaans or English language speakers. However, the levels of personal and situational hope were lower than expected for all groups. These trends need to be investigated further with the construction of an assessment questionnaire.
Prof DJF Maree
Psychology
+27 (0) 12 420 2916
david.maree@up.ac.za
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