The threat of sexual assault can be a persistent stress and insult to women's well-being, affecting their mental health and the conduct of their lives. Recently, investigators have begun to tackle the difficult task of assessing the effectiveness of the strategies women undertake to avoid sexual assault and the responses they make to actual attacks. We propose to build upon this (growing) foundation in order to develop a program of responsible advice that can be given to women regarding how to cope with the general fear and imminent threat of rape. The proposed research will use the techniques of behavioral decision theory to study how women perceive and cope with the threat of rape. A series of questionnaire studies using four different subject populations will examine in detail how women (and to a lesser extent, men) perceive the full set of options, risks, and consequences encountered in situations bearing some threat of sexual assault. Results will include (a) a detailed description of how women understand the threat of rape and the effectiveness of various means of combatting it; and (b) an analysis of the optimality of those understandings and their implications for helping women to make decisions regarding rape prevention and resistance strategies. The latter decision aids should help women to reduce the risk of rape itself, by reducing their exposure (without paying an inordinately high price in terms of reduced personal freedom) and by improving their choice of responses to immediate threats. They should also help reduce worry and anxiety over sexual assault to the necessary minimum and thereby reduce the threat that the fear of assault poses to women's well-being.
| Fischhoff, B (1992) Giving advice. Decision theory perspectives on sexual assault. Am Psychol 47:577-88 |
