Changing the rape-supportive attitudes of traditional and nontraditional male and female college students.

Abstract

This study tested whether individuals possessing traditional sex role attitudes could have their rape-related attitudes influenced by a psychoeducational intervention that has been effective with less traditional individuals. Male and female undergraduates (N = 245) were classified on the basis of their sex role traditionality and received the intervention or served as no-treatment controls. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed that intervention recipients adhered less to rape myths and expressed less rape-supportive attitudes than did controls. Participants were subsequently contacted with a phone appeal regarding women's safety projects that they thought was unrelated to the experiment. On 1 phone appeal measure, experimental participants «responses were significantly less rape-supportive than were control participants» responses