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Rape Myth Acceptance and Accessibility of the Gender Category

Department of Social Psychology, University of Mannheim, GBohner{at}sowi.uni-mannheim.de

Frank Siebler

Department of Social Psychology, University of Mannheim

Sabine Sturm

Department of Social Psychology, University of Mannheim

Dagmar Effler

Department of Social Psychology, University of Mannheim

Miriam Litters

Department of Social Psychology, University of Mannheim

Marc-Andre Reinhard

Department of Social Psychology, University of Mannheim

Stefanie Rutz

Department of Social Psychology, University of Mannheim

Research suggests that women low in rape myth acceptance (RMA) perceive sexual violence at an intergroup level (as a threat by all men against all women), whereas women high in RMA perceive sexual violence at an interpersonal level (as an interaction of certain individuals; Bohner, Weisbrod, Raymond, Barzvi, & Schwarz, 1993). Extending this reasoning, we hypothesized that the gender category would generally be more chronically accessible to low RMA women than high-RMA women. In three studies, spontaneous gender-related responses were recorded. In Study 1, 46 female students provided open-ended self-descriptions in response to the question `Who am I?' In Study 2, 51 female users of a public library judged pairs of two women and of a woman and a man for similarity. In Study 3, 48 female students completed word fragments; critical items had both gender-related and neutral solutions. Towards the end of each study, participants' RMA was assessed. As predicted, low-RMA (versus high-RMA) participants were more likely to spontaneously refer to being a woman in their self-descriptions (Study 1), judged `woman-man pairs' as less similar than a `woman-woman pair' (Study 2), and created female gender-related word-completions both faster and more frequently (Study 3).

Key Words: chronic accessibility • gender • rape myth acceptance • social judgment

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