Attitudes About Date Rape: Context and Consent
Abstract
Sexual assault, and date rape specifically, is a prevalent problem among college
students. Many factors influence students’ attitudes about these situations such as the
closeness of the relationship and alcohol consumed at the time of the incident. These
same factors similarly influence attitudes about reporting an assault. The development
of mobile proximity-based dating applications (dating apps) has added a new, and
largely under-researched, factor of influence to attitudes about perceptions of sexual
consent. The current study used vignettes to examine college students’ perceptions of
sexual consent and attitudes about reporting in a date rape scenario. The vignettes
varied to explore the influence of alcohol use and meeting with a dating app on these
outcome variables. Other information was gathered, such as demographics, sexual
assault history, and rape myth acceptance. These individual differences will also be
investigated in statistical analysis. It was found that 28.9% of women were sexually
assaulted at some point in their life, 53.8% of which were revictimized. When age
brackets were separated, 22.2% of women reported they were sexually assaulted since
turning 18. Men were found to be more accepting of rape myths than women; men
were also more likely to perceive consent in response to the date rape vignette than
women. Acceptance of rape myths was found to be positively related to perceptions of consent in response to the date rape vignette. Alcohol consumption in the vignette was
found to significantly influence perceptions of rape in response to the vignette; rape
was perceived more when Penny was drunk than when she was sober. While these
results are important to consider, the numerical differences were too small to be
considered clinically significant. More research is needed to fully understand the role
of dating apps in the modern world, and future research is suggested to investigate
video vignettes to better address the nuances of interpersonal interactions.