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Salience of Rape Affects Self-Esteem: Individual versus Collective Self-Aspects

University of Kent at Canterbury, UK, g.bohner{at}ukc.ac.uk

Frank Siebler

University of Kent at Canterbury, UK

Yvonne Raaijmakers

Universität Mannheim, Germany

Previous research showed that reading about a rape impaired the self-esteem (SE) of women low in rape myth acceptance (RMA), whereas an opposite trend emerged for high-RMA women (Bohner, Weisbrod, Raymond, Barzvi, & Schwarz, 1993). In an extended replication, 156 female students who had not been targets of sexual violence and were either high or low in RMA participated. To prime individual versus gender-related self-aspects, participants were asked to describe themselves either as a unique individual or `as a woman'; to manipulate rape salience, they then read either a neutral text or a text about a rape. Subsequently, both individual SE and gender-related collective SE were assessed. When rape was salient, low-RMA women showed a decrease in that aspect of SE that had previously been activated, with a stronger effect overall on collective SE, whereas high-RMA women's SE again was not impaired. These findings replicate and extend previous results.

Key Words: inclusion-exclusion • rape • self-esteem • social categorization

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This Article Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Bohner, G. Articles by Raaijmakers, Y. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?