Participants (80 men, 80 women) read hypothetical date rape scenarios, wherein the perpetrator's socioeconomic status (bus driver versus doctor) and the victim's level of resistance (verbal versus verbal and physical) were varied, and made judgments about who was at fault and what the consequences should be. In general, men assigned more blame to the victim and less blame to the perpetrator than did women. However, men assigned more blame to the bus driver than to the doctor. Women, on the other hand, assigned more blame to the victim who was raped by the bus driver than to the victim who was raped by the doctor. The results also indicated that participants recommended harsher punishments for the perpetrator when the victim resisted verbally than when she resisted verbally and physically. Future research on the role of the perpetrator's, the victim's, and the participants' socioeconomic status in judgments about date rape is suggested.

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The effects of participant gender and victim resistance on date rape perceptions have been inconsistent. Participant gender role attitudes may contribute to these inconsistencies. We found women with traditional gender role attitudes were least likely to agree that the perpetrator was guilty of rape. Participants were less convinced of the perpetrator's guilt when the victim resisted verbally than when she resisted verbally and physically, and participants with traditional gender role attitudes were less convinced of the negative impact on the victim when she resisted verbally than when she resisted verbally and physically. Perhaps previous inconsistencies resulted from varying proportions of men and women with traditional versus liberal gender role attitudes in the samples.

We investigated the extent to which male characters outnumber female characters on cereal boxes, and the extent to which male and female characters are portrayed in gender stereotypical ways. Cereal boxes (N= 217) from a large grocery store in the northeastern United States were examined. Characters on the front and back of the boxes were coded for gender, species (person, animal, object), age (child/adolescent, adult), and activity level (passive/sedentary, active). Male characters outnumbered female characters by more than 2 to 1. Female characters were more likely than male characters to be depicted as people and as children/adolescents, whereas male characters were more likely than female characters to be portrayed as animals and as adults. Suggestions for further research are discussed.

This study examined the extent to which young adults' recollections of their childhood experiences with parents were associated with their reported feelings and behavior in romantic relationships. Participants were 205 young adults. Based on a question from the Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan, & Main, 1996), participants wrote adjectives that described their childhood relationships with each parent as well as childhood incidents that illustrated those adjectives. Participants' feelings and behavior in romantic relationships were assessed with Brennan and Shaver's (1995) Adult Attachment Scales. Those who were rated as having more positive and loving relationships with mothers were more trusting and were more likely to seek comfort from their romantic partners during times of distress and to "open up" to them. Similarly, those who were rated as having more positive and loving relationships with fathers were also more likely to seek comfort from their romantic partners and were more comfortable relying on their partners.