Sexual responses to consenting and forced sex in a large sample of rapists and nonrapists

In contrast to previous findings, rapists showed an appropriate though comparatively moderate discrimination between rape and mutually-consenting episodes, and nonrapists showed less arousal to rape episodes than to consenting episodes, with their weakest responses being to the most violent rape scene.

Abstract

Erectile responses to various sexual scenarios elicited from a large sample of incarcerated rapists (N = 60) were compared with the responses of male undergraduates (N = 41). In the sexual scenarios, the consent offered by the female and the degree of force used by the male was varied across the episodes. Each S was tested in two laboratory sessions. Nonrapists showed a strong discrimination between rape and mutually-consenting episodes; they showed greatest arousal to the description of an enthusiastic consenting female and least arousal to the most violent rape. In contrast to previous findings, rapists showed an appropriate though comparatively moderate discrimination between rape and mutually-consenting episodes. They showed less arousal to rape episodes than to consenting episodes, with their weakest responses being to the most violent rape scene. The stronger discrimination between rape and consenting sex shown by the nonrapists was mainly due to increases in the nonrapists' discrimination in the second session, during which their arousal to consent cues was enhanced. These findings are discussed in terms of the sexual-preference hypothesis and the inhibitory hypothesis of sexual agression.