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Expecting to Meet a Rape Victim Affects Women’s Self-Esteem: The Moderating Role of Rape Myth Acceptance

Universitt Bielefeld

Efthymios Lampridis

University of Ioannina

Research has shown that women’s level of rape myth acceptance (RMA) moderates the impact of rape salience on their self-esteem. Conceptually replicating previous studies where rape salience was operationalized by presenting newspaper articles, the present study featured a realistic expectation of meeting a rape victim. Female students (N= 82) who were either low or high in RMA expected a conversation with another woman about one of three topics: studying, the other woman’s illness (leukemia), or the other woman’s experience of having been raped. Then their collective self-esteem, individual self-esteem, and affect were assessed. In line with predictions, low-RMA women reported lower self-esteem in the rape condition than in the studying condition, whereas high-RMA participants showed an opposite effect. Although affect was generally lower in the rape condition than in the neutral condition, this effect was significantly more pronounced for low-RMA than high-RMA women. Results for the leukemia condition differed from those in the rape condition, confirming the content-specificity of the moderating effect of RMA.

Key Words: gender • rape myths • self-esteem • social categorization • social judgment

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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 Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Bohner, G. Articles by Lampridis, E. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?