Construct validity of two heterosocial perception skill measures for assessing rape proclivity

Rape-supportive attitudes and self-reported rape proclivity (using a measure by Malamuth, Haber, & Feshbach, 1980) were negatively correlated with decoding accuracy of women's negative cues (measured by the TRAC-D; McDonel, McFall, Schlundt, & Levenson, 1985) in an unselected sample of male college students. Better decoders of negative female cues on the TRAC-D, as well as subjects expressing fewer rape-supportive beliefs and less rape proclivity, were more conservative in their estimates of a man's justification in continuing to make sexual advances in the face of a woman's negative cues on the Heterosocial Perception Survey (HPS; McDonel, 1986). Ability to decode men's interpersonal cues was not correlated with responses on the HPS or rape attitude and proclivity measures, suggesting that specific rather than global decoding deficits were useful predictors of rape correlates. These results support the construct validity of the two social perception measures, the TRAC-D, and the HPS, as measures of rape proclivity.