Alcohol Consumption and Sexual Aggression Perpetration: A Meta-Analytic Review

Sexual aggression often has serious and lasting effects on victims of all genders. One key risk factor for sexual aggression is alcohol consumption. Alcohol consumption promotes sexual aggression by disrupting cognitive functions, including the ability to process the internal and external cues that regulate social behavior. This meta-analysis of the experimental literature with alcohol administration protocols aimed to quantify this relationship by updating previous work and by examining potential moderators. Acute alcohol consumption was operationalized using the experimental condition participants were randomly assigned to (i.e., alcohol or no alcohol control). Sexual aggression was operationalized through measures of sexual aggression intentions and behaviors, including coercive condom use resistance. We also investigated four moderators of this link, namely aggressive personality traits, past sexual aggression perpetration, alcohol-related expectancies, and emotion regulation capacity. The meta-analysis included 34 experimental studies involving 5,643 participants. We found a significant main effect of alcohol consumption on sexual aggression (g = 0.25, 95% confidence interval [0.13, 0.37]). None of the moderator variables we tested were significant, indicating that the link between alcohol and sexual aggression was robust; alcohol increases the chances of sexual aggression perpetration regardless of these individual differences. Although it is difficult to measure sexual aggression in the laboratory, we encourage the development of more realistic methods (e.g., virtual reality).