True Crime Consumption as Defensive Vigilance: Psychological Mechanisms of a Rape Avoidance System

The circumvention of female reproductive choice via rape is a costly and evolutionarily persistent threat to women's reproductive fitness. This is argued to have generated selection pressure for a precautionary threat management system for rape avoidance among women. Such a system would regulate women's fear of rape as a functional emotional response to inputs providing information about the current risk and reproductive cost of rape. Fear of rape is expected to subsequently motivate adaptive behavior to avoid threats to one's reproductive choice. The current research tested key tenets of this proposed system and found that women report greater fear of rape as a function of characteristics that alter the likelihood of being victimized, including being younger, living in a neighborhood perceived as dangerous, living in close proximity to family, and having been the victim of a sexual assault in the past. We also discuss mixed and null results with respect to the role of relationship status and mate value. In turn, fear of rape was associated with behavior expected to reduce one's risk of being victimized. Specifically, women who were more fearful of rape reported consuming true crime media with greater frequency and indicated that this consumption was specifically motivated by the desire to learn strategies to prevent or escape an attack. Overall, results were fairly consistent with a threat management system approach and may help to explain why fear of rape is a powerful feature of women's psychology.