Situational and Dispositional Factors in Rape Cognitions: The Roles of Social Media and the Dark Triad Traits

Abstract

Previous research has established the importance of socially aversive personality traits (i.e., the Dark Triad) in rape cognitions (operationalized here as rape-supportive attitudes, rape victim empathy, and hostile masculinity). However, less is known about how sexist social media content influences attitudes toward rape cognitions depending on the personality of the individual. In an online experiment, after completing the Short Dark Triad-3 questionnaire, participants ( N = 180) were primed with either sexist or neutral tweets, rating them for acceptability, humor, rudeness, and ignorance. Participants then completed scales for rape-supportive attitudes, victim empathy, and hostile masculinity. Sexist tweets were rated as significantly less acceptable and humorous, and more rude and ignorant than neutral tweets. However, those high in the Dark Triad found the sexist tweets as funny and acceptable. Overall, exposure to the sexist tweets did not increase rape cognitions. Moreover, the Dark Triad traits had similar significant, positive correlations with rape-supportive attitudes, victim blame, and hostile masculinity in both sexist and neutral tweet conditions. Multiple regression analyses (controlling for gender) revealed that psychopathy was the strongest positive predictor for increased rape cognitions. Findings suggest that short exposure to sexist social media content may not influence rape cognitions, but that dispositional factors such as psychopathy are more important.

Barriers to Bystander Intervention in Sexual Harassment: The Dark Triad and Rape Myth acceptance in Indonesia, Singapore, and United Kingdom

“…Rape myth acceptance has been found to be a major bystander barrier in previous studies, mainly in the United States (e.g. Labhardt et al., 2017 ), with some evidence from Australia ( Kania & Cale, 2018 ), Italy ( Martini & De Piccoli, 2020 ) and Ecuador ( Lyons, Brewer, et al, 2021 ). Our results showed that rape myth acceptance also prevents people from helping the victims in Indonesia, Singapore and the United Kingdom.…”

Navigating the Nexus: Childhood Trauma, Sexually Coercive Behaviour, Dark Tetrad Personality Traits, and Sexual Fantasy

“…Intriguingly, only sexual fantasies involving intimacy were perceived as negative by male survivors. A study by Maniglio [74]. suggest that early traumatic experiences, particularly those related to sexual abuse during childhood, can lead to the development of psychiatric disorders or emotional distress in the future.…”