Expecting to Meet a Rape Victim Affects Women’s Self-Esteem: The Moderating Role of Rape Myth Acceptance

Research has shown that women’s level of rape myth acceptance (RMA) moderates the impact of rape salience on their self-esteem. Conceptually replicating previous studies where rape salience was operationalized by presenting newspaper articles, the present study featured a realistic expectation of meeting a rape victim. Female students ( N= 82) who were either low or high in RMA expected a conversation with another woman about one of three topics: studying, the other woman’s illness (leukemia), or the other woman’s experience of having been raped. Then their collective self-esteem, individual self-esteem, and affect were assessed. In line with predictions, low-RMA women reported lower self-esteem in the rape condition than in the studying condition, whereas high-RMA participants showed an opposite effect. Although affect was generally lower in the rape condition than in the neutral condition, this effect was significantly more pronounced for low-RMA than high-RMA women. Results for the leukemia condition differed from those in the rape condition, confirming the content-specificity of the moderating effect of RMA.