Originally published: . Volume 8, No. 3. Source pages: 10.
University of Louisiana Lafayette Researchers Present at Society for Personality & Social Psychology
Members of the Sexual Violence Research Lab recently traveled to San Antonio, Texas, to present research at the annual convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
Recent masters graduate Sara Gibson presented her work in a poster presentation, titled, “A content analysis of reactions to an acquaintance rape vignette.”
Associate Professor of Psychology, Dr. Amy Brown and current undergraduate lab member Melanie Schanke also presented a poster on their work, “Alcohol intoxication and willingness to intervene in hypothetical sexual assault scenarios.”
The Sexual Violence Research Lab at UL Lafayette is led by Dr. Brown and their research follows two primary lines of investigation:
The researchers study the social perception of sexual violence. They explore the “willingness to provide sympathy and support to victims and judgments of responsibility toward victims and perpetrators in hypothetical vignettes.” The researchers want to better understand the issues related to research indicating that men judge victims more harshly, that victims are judged more harshly if they had been drinking or if rape involved little force on the part of the perpetrator.
The other line of research explores the willingness to engage in and prior experience with prosocial intervention in the context of sexual violence. “We have worked on creating new measures of bystander attitudes and have investigated the impact of gender and perceived peer norms on bystander attitudes and behaviors. Current studies are investigating the impact of alcohol intoxication on bystanders by surveying drinkers in bars.”
Dr. Brown earned her undergraduate from Centenary and her PhD from Miami University.
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