Training men to judge women ’s sexual interest more accurately

Researchers may have found a new way to combat sexual aggression By Christian Jarrett “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”  Donald Trump, 2016 Republican Party nominee for US president, speaking in 2005 (full transcript). The causes of sexual aggression are many, but anecdotal evidence (for example, as implied in the above quote), and research-based evidence, suggests that at least part of it has to do with when men overestimate women’s levels of sexual interest. A new study in the Psychology of Violence finds that men with a history of sexual aggression are especially likely to make this kind of misjudgment, in part because they focus on inappropriate cues, such as a woman’s attractiveness, rather than on her actual emotions. But promisingly, the research also suggests that it’s possible, through practice, to reduce this bias. This is an important finding considering previous research has shown that information-based educational programmes designed to reduce sexual aggression (through challenging rape myths, for example) are relatively ineffective. Teresa Treat and her colleagues asked 183 heterosexual or bisexual male students to look at hundreds of full-length photographs of female students and to judge their levels of sexual interest (see below). The photographs were posed by...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Forensic Gender Sex Source Type: blogs
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