A Critical Evaluation of ‘What Is a Typical Rape? Effects of Victim and Participant Gender in Female and Male Rape Perception’ (Irina Anderson, 2007).

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Introduction This study was conducted not only to investigate whether people’s assumptions and perceptions of rape have changed due to the increasing publicity and awareness of issues surrounding rape, but also to see whether people’s perceptions of rape are affected by the gender of both the participant and the victim. The study had three hypotheses; The first hypothesis was that due to the changing attitudes of the public over recent years, female rape will be conceptualized as acquaintance rape rather than stranger rape by respondents. The second hypothesis was to investigate the cultural lag in perception of male rape. It was that male rape would be conceptualized as stranger rape if spontaneously asked of the respondent, and significantly more frequently than female rape. Female rape would be conceptualized as acquaintance rape, also more frequently than male rape. Finally, the third hypothesis was that females will describe an acquaintance rape if asked to describe a male or female rape situation. Men however, will reproduce a stranger rape situation when asked to describe a male or female rape situation. To test these hypotheses the researchers asked 119 participants to describe a situation where a rape took place. They also informed the participant, by random assignment, whether the victim of rape of the situation was male or female. When this was completed, all the descriptions of the scenarios were put through an analytic strategy where key words were taken from the description and the description could then be assessed as stranger rape or acquaintance rape. The results of the study contradicted the predictions of the researchers. Instead of a change in attitude it was found that female rape was conceptualized as stranger rape. Also rather than lag behind the predicted progression of perception of female rape, male rape was not viewed in terms of the

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