Citation

Gannon TA, Rose MR. Sex. Abuse 2009; 21(2): 194-207.

Affiliation

Psychology Department, Keynes College, University of Kent, Kent, UK. t.a.gannon@kent.ac.uk

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1079063209332236

PMID

19439766

Abstract

Although female child molesters are hypothesized to hold offense-supportive cognitions that facilitate their sexual offenses, there have been no implicit social-cognitive studies used to investigate this. Using an implicit memory recognition paradigm, it is shown that female child molesters--relative to female offender controls--are more likely to interpret ambiguous information about males in a threatening manner. These results suggest that female child molesters hold a series of beliefs about men's dangerousness and power. The authors discuss these results and explore the possibility that these beliefs about male dangerousness are related to a risk of abusing children.

Language: en