News release

From: The Royal Society

Description as prescription? A registered report on the effect of evolutionary psychology on biological essentialism and rape attributions

Sexual violence against women and girls is a serious concern, and past research suggests that evolutionary theories have the potential to promote victim-blaming attitudes among laypeople. This registered report investigated whether evolutionary explanations for male aggression increase biological essentialism, and whether this, in turn, impacts attributions about an ‘ambiguous’ rape vignette. This two-part study collected data from 606 demographically representative UK participants. Science outreach videos were used as the experimental manipulation following facts about men’s sexual aggression: an evolutionary explanation presented by David Buss, a sociocultural explanation presented by Jackson Katz, and a control condition (video about nature). Then, participants completed a biological essentialism measure, read a rape vignette, and completed measures of rape attributions. Our results indicated that the evolutionary condition led to higher victim culpability as compared to the social condition, through an increase in biological essentialism. There were no effects of the experimental conditions when compared to the nature video. There were no effects on perpetrator culpability. We conclude that evolutionary psychology can increase victim blaming attitudes through an increase in the belief that gender roles are natural and immutable, and that this can be understood through the theoretical framework “the cultural scaffolding of rape”.

Evolutionary explanation and blame - Exposure to evolutionary explanations of male sexual aggression can increase victim-blaming in rape cases. Over 600 UK adults were showed one of three videos, showing either an evolutionary explanation of male sexual aggression, a sociocultural explanation, or an unrelated control video. They then read scenario that met the legal definition of rape, yet contained features known to make this viewed as ambiguous by outsiders, and judged victim and perpetrator responsibility. People exposed to the evolutionary explanation attributed more blame to the victim than those who saw the sociocultural explanation. The study suggests that explaining behaviour as biological and inevitable can shape judgements.