Sexually aggressive men's perceptions of women's communications: Testing three explanations.

Tested 3 explanations of findings that sexually aggressive men perceive women's communications differently than less aggressive men. The 1st suggests that aggressors are incompetent in decoding women's negative emotions. The 2nd posits that they fail to make subtle distinctions between women's friendliness and seductiveness and between assertiveness and hostility. The 3rd explanation contends that sexual aggressors use a suspicious schema and therefore discount the veridicality of women's communications. These explanations were tested using videotaped scenarios in which a woman's responses to a man's advances were systematically varied. The data were most supportive of the suspicious schema explanation. These findings are integrated with other research on the characteristics of sexual aggressors and on the perceptions of aggressive children and of maritally violent men. Implications for interventions are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)