Sexual aggression toward women is a grave problem. Official reports underestimate the rate; community surveys reveal that women experience sexual victimization at rates ranging from 5% to 24%. Many such acts go unreported, often because the perpetrator was a date, spouse, or lover. Recent research on sexual coercion among nonoffenders demonstrate that 12% to 15% of young male college students admit to having committed acts that meet legal definitions of rape and attempted rape, without acknowledging the nature of their acts. Models of rape developed from research with offenders are inadequate, especially as applied to nonoffender sexually coercive males. This study proposes to test the hypothesis that four factors interact to permit the development of nonoffender sexually coercive behavior: history of aggressive style, history of social acceptance despite aggression, high levels of anger arousal, and hostile attitudes toward women. Participants will be 180 males (aged 18-21) from an unselected, representative sample of young men in a rural north Georgia County. This study is unique in its utilization of previously collected longitudinal data on the participants at approximately age 10, such that it permits a cost-effective prospective longitudinal investigation of the development of sexually coercive behavior in young men.
