Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 29, 2026

Assessment of Sexual Behavior of Male Mice
Published on: March 5, 2020
Time-Varying Risk Factors and Sexual Aggression Perpetration Among Male College Students
Martie P Thompson1, Jeffrey Brooks Kingree2, Heidi Zinzow3
1Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life, and Department of Youth, Family, and Community Studies, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina.
Purpose:
Preventing sexual aggression (SA) can be informed by determining if time-varying risk factors differentiate men who follow different sexual aggression risk trajectories.
Methods:
Data are from a longitudinal study with 795 college males surveyed at the end of each of their 4 years of college in 2008-2011. Repeated measures general linear models tested if changes in risk factors corresponded with sexual aggression trajectory membership.
Results:
Changes in the risk factors corresponded with SA trajectories. Men who came to college with a history of SA but decreased their perpetration likelihood during college showed concurrent decreases in sexual compulsivity, impulsivity, hostile attitudes toward women, rape supportive beliefs, perceptions of peer approval of forced sex, and perceptions of peer pressure to have sex with many different women, and smaller increases in pornography use over their college years. Conversely, men who increased levels of SA over time demonstrated larger increases in risk factors in comparison to other trajectory groups.
Conclusions:
The odds that males engaged in sexual aggression corresponded with changes in key risk factors. Risk factors were not static and interventions designed to alter them may lead to changes in sexual aggression risk.
Related Concept Videos
Criticisms of the Evolutionary Perspective
Evolutionary psychology provides one explanation for these findings, suggesting...
Factors Influencing Attraction II: Physical Attraction
Aggression
Factors Affecting the Risk of Infection
The integrity and count of the white blood cells help the body resist pathogens and fight infection. When impaired, it reduces the body's resistance to pathogens. The acidic pH levels of the gastrointestinal, genitourinary tracts, and skin...
Factors Influencing Attraction IV: Reciprocity
Factors Influencing Attraction V: Social Skills

