Thirty-three percent of men report committing some form of sexual aggression-unwanted sexual contact including sexual assault and rape-since the age of 14.1 Alcohol is a significant factor: up to 66% of sexual assaults occur when the perpetrator has been drinking.2 Alcohol intoxication compounds sexual aggression likelihood through its disruption of cognitive processes and inhibitory control.36 Intoxication also impedes the individual's ability to utilize higher order cognitive processes, including those necessary for adaptive emotion regulation. Despite emerging research on emotion and emotion regulation in clinical and developmental psychology22, limited research has been conducted on the contribution of emotional arousal and emotion regulation to sexual aggression perpetration in college- and community-samples. Thus the present study focuses on emotional arousal and the emotional regulatory and situational factors that influence sexual aggression. Emotion regulation (ER)-the capacity to detect, control, modulate, and manage emotional states4-may have a contributing role in sexual aggression perpetration that has previously been unstudied. When experiencing emotion arousal, men who use maladaptive regulatory strategies (e.g. suppression,) rather than adaptive strategies (e.g. cognitive reappraisal) are more likely to display psychological and physical aggression intentions with a dating partner.3 While self-report measures of emotion regulation are well- validated, psychophysiological measures of emotional arousal and ER provide greater specificity into the physiological processes accompanying these processes.5 Alcohol administration experiments employing hypothetical eroticized analog scenarios allow for making causal inferences about alcohol's effects on men's sexual aggression intentions.7 Therefore, the present study proposes an innovative design using an alcohol administration protocol and psychophysiological and self-report measures of emotional arousal and emotion regulation to examine the influences of regulatory processes and acute intoxication on sexual aggression intentions. The proposed study will provide valuable insight into the understudied arena of emotional regulatory factors involved in sexual aggression. Moreover, it will provide vital training to a talented and motivated young researcher with impressive research and clinical experiences and a strong academic record. The training and mentorship opportunities afforded in the proposed project and training grant will be crucial for the applicant's development into an independent and productive clinical scientist.
Despite the public health burden and current political and media focus on sexual aggression, there are notable gaps in the literature explaining factors that contribute to sexual aggression perpetration. The relationship between sexual aggression, acute intoxication, emotional arousal, and emotion regulation in college and college-aged populations is understudied. Greater understanding into these relationships has potential implications for prevention and intervention in sexual aggression perpetration in an at-risk population.
| Neilson, Elizabeth C; Bird, Elizabeth R; Metzger, Isha W et al. (2018) Understanding sexual assault risk perception in college: Associations among sexual assault history, drinking to cope, and alcohol use. Addict Behav 78:178-186 |
| Neilson, Elizabeth C; Norris, Jeanette; Bryan, Amanda E B et al. (2017) Sexual Assault Severity and Depressive Symptoms as Longitudinal Predictors of the Quality of Women's Sexual Experiences. J Sex Marital Ther 43:463-478 |
