Rape Myth Acceptance and Accessibility of the Gender Category

Abstract

Research suggests that women low in rape myth acceptance (RMA) perceive sexual violence at an intergroup level (as a threat by all men against all women), whereas women high in RMA perceive sexual violence at an interpersonal level (as an interaction of certain individuals; Bohner, Weisbrod, Raymond, Barzvi, & Schwarz, 1993). Extending this reasoning, we hypothesized that the gender category would generally be more chronically accessible to low RMA women than high-RMA women. In three studies, spontaneous gender-related responses were recorded. In Study 1, 46 female students provided open-ended self-descriptions in response to the question `Who am I?' In Study 2, 51 female users of a public library judged pairs of two women and of a woman and a man for similarity. In Study 3, 48 female students completed word fragments; critical items had both gender-related and neutral solutions. Towards the end of each study, participants' RMA was assessed. As predicted, low-RMA (versus high-RMA) participants were more likely to spontaneously refer to being a woman in their self-descriptions (Study 1), judged `woman-man pairs' as less similar than a `woman-woman pair' (Study 2), and created female gender-related word-completions both faster and more frequently (Study 3).