Coercive sexual behavior, including date rape, has become recognized as a serious problem among adolesents and young adults. Alcohol has been implicated in a substantial number of these assaults, although its exact role has not been studied experimentally. Social influence theory may supply a valuable framework to examine this relationship. Alcohol may serve as a cue, or discriminative stimulus, to engage a set of norms associated with sexual behavior that would otherwise be considered inappropriate. To study this hypothesis the proposed research will compare the differenes in perceptions of social norms in sexually coercive encounters involving alcohol consumption versus one that does not. The mediating influence of individual difference variables will also be examined.
