Psychology Commons^™

Women's Perceptions Of Sexual Assault Perpetrators And Fear Of Rape, Aaron George Cisneros

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The overarching goal of the present thesis was to study women’s perceptions of sexual assault perpetrators and how those perceptions relate to fear of sexual assault. Previous researchers have developed a substantial literature on predictors and correlates of sexual assault perpetration. What is not known is how accurate women’s perceptions are of these predictors. Rationale from both evolutionary mismatch theory and social psychological stereotype theory suggests that women’s perceptions may be inaccurate. In the present thesis, I tested a set of hypotheses designed to examine individual differences in women’s perceptions of sexual assault perpetrators and how these perceptions relate to …