The Role of Psychology in Explaining Rape
Introduction
Rape is a vicious sex crime that happens to over 100,00
thousands women a year. The number of accountants of rape that go unreported
surpasses the number that is reported. What makes an individual violate another
person body and personal space? Some people feel that a rapist is triggered by
sexual drives or need for power and control when committing a crime of rape.
While other feels that some part of the brain isn't functioning correctly, which
leads the man to commit rape against a women. This paper will examine the
reasons why men rape women from a psychological approach.
What possible motive could trigger a man to violate the sanctity of a woman's
body by raping her? When a man rapes a woman, could it be that he has low
intelligence and psychological problems that causes them to commit such a
violent act. This paper will be based on a micro theory approach dealing with
specific individuals and not a whole society.
A young female is sleeping in her home when she is awaken
by a noise in another room. Out of nowhere a man appears with a gun telling her
to be quiet and not scream. The man them forces himself on the female and
violates her body and privacy. This story is one that is heard to often. Many
women are raped and victimized everyday.
Rape is a vicious sex crime that happens to over 100,00
thousands women a year. When a female is forced to engage in sexual acts this is
considered rape. The number of accountants of rape that go unreported surpasses
the number that is reported. What makes an individual violate another person
body and personal space? Some people feel that a rapist is triggered by sexual
drives or need for power and control when committing a crime of rape. While
other feels that some part of the brain isn't functioning correctly, which leads
the man to commit rape against a women. This paper is going to examine the
reasons why men rape women from a psychological approach.
What possible motive could trigger a man to violate the
sanctity of a woman's body by raping her? When a man rapes a woman, could it be
that he has low intelligence and psychological problems that causes them to
commit such a violent act. Perhaps the man is driven by a need to feel dominant
and powerful by taking a precious act and turning it into a harsh crime. This
paper will be based on a micro theory approach dealing with specific individuals
and not a whole society.
Literature Review
A definition of rape provided by Searloes and Bergers in 1987
stated that rape was nonconsensual sexual penetration of an adolescent or adult
obtained by physical force, by threat of bodily harm, or when the victim is
incapable of giving consent for sexual penetration because of mental retardation
or another mental illness, or intoxication. The perceived causes of rape scale
developed by Chowan and Campbell (1995) and by Chowan and Quinton (1997) has six
causes of rape: female precipitation, male dominance, male sexuality, male
hostility, male pathology, and society. According to Gloria Cowan these six
beliefs differentiate individual and social causes of rape. Among individual
causes of rape is female precipitation, which blames the victim and male
hostility, male pathology and male sexuality, which seeks to blame the rapist
and not the victim. Social causes of rape include male dominance and society.
Myths about rape have pushed to blame the victim and
exonerate the rapist. The most common rape myth is female precipitation because
it holds the victim responsible for the rape according to M.R.Burt in 1991. In
the court systems many times victims are made to feel like trash. They are being
raped all over again by accusations that depicts them as wearing provocative
clothing, or displaying their bodies making them a target for rape. According to
Burt in 1991 some people have the idea that men cannot control their sexual
urges. This idea is still trying to put the blame on the victim by saying that
they should do things to prevent men from having these strong urges.
A study was conducted by Cowan in 2000 on the beliefs about the causes of four
types of rape. The purpose of this study was to examine perceived causes of rape
and punishment and treatment recommendations for four types of rape stranger,
acquaintance, date, and partner rapes. The study found that there are
distinctions among different types of rape in three perceived causes, with
female precipitation most strongly associated with a date or partner rape and
male pathology and male hostility least attributed to partner rape.
Individual rapists have a variety of motivations for the
reasons they rape. Many say they rape because they want to impress their friends
by loosing their virginity or to avenge himself against a woman who has spurned
him (Randy Thornhill & Craig Palmer 2000).
Research Methods
A study done about the causes of four types of rape is essential in understanding why so many women a year are raped (Cowan 2000). The study used five tables to show the causes of four types of rape: stranger rape, acquaintance rape, date rape, and partner rape.
Table 1 shows the scenarios the participants of this study were shown. After reading the table they were asked to express the cause of these rapes from their point of view.
Below in Table II it presents the F values () and means for the four types of rape for all measures. The belief that the female precipitated rape was significantly higher in date rape and partner rape. The belief that the rape was caused by male hostility and by male pathology, ratings were significantly lower for partner rape than for stranger, acquaintance, and date rape. The belief that rape was caused by male dominance was significantly higher for acquaintance and date rape than for stranger rape.
Table III represents there are significant gender differences across the types of rape. Female who participated in the study believed that male dominance, male hostility, and society caused rape more than male participants did. Males believed that rape was caused more from female precipitation than did the females. Even though men thought that female precipitation was the cause of rape more than women; they did not rate that the highest for the cause of rape.
Table IV shows that between the measures of male pathology and treatment showed that there was significant interaction between the type of rape and participant gender.
Table V shows that the effect of ethnicity was modified by gender of the participant for three of the four perceived causes of rape: Female Precipitation, Male Dominance, and Male Hostility. According to the table it was interesting to find that Hispanic men scored significantly higher on Male Sexuality as the cause of rape, than Caucasian women and men but not significantly higher than Hispanic women. One might hypothesize that this may have something to do with the Hispanic culture.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
There are many different types of rape such as date rape, stranger rape, acquaintance rape, and partner rape. Within these four types of rape there has been speculation about what is the cause of each of these types of rape.
The context of this paper has described what has been the cause of the four types of rapes from research done by Cowan (2000). However, I feel that since rape is prevalent that their must be more research done to see if there are ways to prevent these types of rape and what cause a person to be a rapist. As stated earlier in the paper, rape is a vicious sex crime that happens to over 100,000 women a year. This number only includes the rapes that have been reported. There are hundreds of thousands cases of rape that have not been reported. Rape happens mostly to women; however, there have been some reports of men that have been raped.
If the act of rape is so vicious and horrible, why does it happen to so many women? Within the context of my paper I addressed the many possibilities of why some rape women. Some people think that men rape because of sexual needs that need to have fulfilled. In some cases that is the reason, but it is not very common that a rape occurs because of sexual needs. More often men rape because some have a psychological need to have control and to be dominant. Men see raping women as a way to get control of them and to have them do whatever they want.
Last updated:
12/01/03