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Hypothesis: We expect that each generation will reflect an attitude towards rape that coincides with the view of rape that was socially accepted during the time in which they grew up. For example, older generations will be more likely to exclude marital rape in their definitions. We also hypothesize that evolutionary theory will be more accepted among younger generations, which would indicate a growing acceptance for these new explanations.
Rape is an ever-persistent problem, in any culture, and the attempts for understanding the problem are continual. Rape is most often defined by law (Ellis 1989) and one could assume that laws are shaped largely by social norms and definitions. By studying the changing definitions, we will be able to better understand the influence of society on law, and vice versa. We plan on researching landmark cases that have to do with rape. This will give us insight into the cultural repercussions of court rulings on rape, which we can compare to the results that we receive from our surveys. If what evolutionary theorists say is right, rape should be a concern for all. Our study will help us to understand the reason for the changes in these concerns over the span of three generations.
We didn't come across any studies similar to the cross-sectional study that we have suggested, but rape has been a widely researched topic. The American Medical Association posted a study in which children, between the ages of eleven and fourteen, were asked about the acceptability of specific rape situations. The results were somewhat shocking, with the majority of children, both boys and girls, reporting that rape was an acceptable act under many circumstances such as marriage and dating. These children could quite possibly reflect the social science theories of rape, suggesting some problems among their socializing agents. According to Ellis (1989), the social learning and feminist theories of rape are presently the most widely accepted. Though they were not the first by any means to introduce the theory, Thornhill and Palmer (2000) recently created a frenzy of controversy over their explanation of the evolutionary theory of rape. Most of the furor came from the suggestion that the way women dress and behave could put them at risk. This is one idea of evolutionary theory that we wish to present in our survey. Our results could say something of the likelihood that future generations would warm up to the ideas behind the evolutionary theory. The importance of rape definition is most evident in a study by Palmer (1989) in which he re-analyzed previous studies of rape in other cultures. Many of these previous studies had claimed that rape was completely absent in the cultures in question, which is true in some cases, according to their own cultural definitions of rape. In every instance, Palmer was able to give evidence of rape occurrence, as defined by our culture. In many of these other cultures, it was the cultural norm for a man to force himself on a woman in certain situations.
Experimental Design
Because we are dealing with such a sensitive issue, our first consideration in forming an appropriate format for our survey is a warning of its sensitive subject matter and a statement of anonymity. We want to be sure that people are participating in the survey on their own free will, and that if it makes them uncomfortable they have every right to decline to take the survey. If during the survey they do not wish to proceed, they can decline to finish the survey. Also, no one under the age of eighteen will be given the survey. In order to ensure the validity and consistency of our data, we must ask preliminary questions into the circumstance of the participants. Because we feel that our topic is affected by social influence, we will inquire into the demographic, religious, socio-economic, political, educational, ethnic, and gender influences on the participant. Using these responses we will isolate the results to specifications that will enable us to correlate any of these factors with their reactions. Our surveys will target three specific generations that we have defined in ten-year spans of age- 20-30, 45-55, and 70-80. We are aiming for at least fifty surveys for each cohort. Our class would of course be participants in our study, as applicable, for those who fall within the first cohort being studied.
Because of a time constraint we have been unable to formulate the exact questions for our survey. We will be using court case litigations and hypothetical situations to isolate varying opinions of rape under different circumstances. In this way, we hope to inadvertently obtain the participants' opinions of controversial issues surrounding rape and its present and previous definitions. We will address issues of marital rape, date rape, situations in which the behavior of the victim is in question (i.e. scantily clad, flirtations, saying no at the last minute), degree of sexual advancement needed for the act to be defined as rape (i.e. nature of penetration), and varying degrees of punishment for different degrees of coercion (i.e. statutory rape, use of weapons, presence of mind-altering substances). An example of our format for questioning is as follows:
In Smith vs. Wade, a man was sentenced to 2 years in prison for physically
forcing his wife to have sex. Do you feel this sentence was:
A) much too severe
B) somewhat too severe
C) about right
D) not enough
E) not nearly enough
We are going on the assumption that the legal definitions will parallel social definition within its specific time period. We will use severity of punishment as a measure of the deviance from social norms. To analyze our data, we will assign number value to the responses (higher numbers for more severe degrees of punishment) and the differences in the numbers should reflect opinions amongst the particular cohorts towards the issues presented.
We will also question our participants about their opinions of the three prominent views of rape that we had defined earlier as social learning, feminist, and evolutionary. These theories had been constructed as paradigms for understanding the reasons and motivations for the occurrence of rape. With this in mind, we will use the results of these questions as implications into the participants' personal views of likely motivations for rape. We expect that these too will reflect whichever theory was most prominent in the time period in which the participants grew up.
Timeline:
Week 8: Submit proposal; litigation research
Week 9: Finalize survey format
Week 10: Spring Break- distribute surveys, focusing mainly on older cohorts
Week 11-13: Continue distribution of surveys; continue researching litigations for final analyses of data
Week 14: Organization and analysis of data
Week 15: Conclusions and implications
Week 16: Final draft due
References:
Barber, Nigel. 1998. Parenting: Roles, Styles, and Outcomes. Commack, NY: Nova.
Chagnon, Napoleon, and William Irons, eds. 1979. Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective. North Scituate, Mass.: Duxbury Press.
Ellis, Lee. 1989. Theories of Rape. New York: Hemisphere Publishing.
Freud, Sigmund. 1933. New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. New York: W.W. Norton.
Palmer, Craig. 1989. "Is Rape a Cultural Universal? A Reexamination of the Ethnographic Data," Ethnology 28:1-16.
Thornhill, Randy, and Craig T. Palmer. 2000. A Natural History of Rape. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Wright, Robert. 1994. The Moral Animal. New York: Vintage Books.
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