Relationships and Health 437■ Being a victim of heterosexual sexual coercion is as-
sociated with more negative consequences for females
than males.
■ People are less sympathetic to victims of rape when the
rape is committed by a known other and there is no evi-
dence of physical injury, which is unfortunate because
it is the most typical rape scenario. Rape is most often
committed by someone who is known and with the use
of verbal rather than physical threats.
■ Perpetrators of rape are more likely to hold rape myths.
People who hold rape myths express less sympathy for
victims.
■ Most recent theories conceptualize rape as an act of
violence rather than an act of sex.
■ Situational forces contribute to rape and sexual coer-
cion. Men are more likely than women to perceive neu-
tral behaviors in sexual terms.
■ Sexual scripts for male–female relationships contribute
to these misperceptions, as men are expected to ini-
tiate sexual interactions and women are expected to
dismiss men’s advances.assault when the perpetrator was male and
female (Lev-Wiesel & Besser, 2006). The list
contained eight sexual assault behaviors and
six neutral behaviors. Students were more
likely to rate the sexual assault behaviors as
indicative of sexual assault if the perpetrator
was male than female.
Thus rape and sexual coercion may be
a function of both the person and the situ-
ation. Sexual violence may be more likely
to occur in certain situations among people
who have predisposing characteristics.TAKE HOME POINTS
■ It is difficult to measure the frequency of rape and
sexual coercion due to a variety of definitional issues,
including the specific act and the determination of
consent.
■ Although women are more likely than men to be vic-
tims of rape, studies of college students report similar
levels of sexual coercion among females and males.Summary
It is not clear if there are sex differences
in the structural dimensions of support,
but women perceive and receive greater
support functions. Supportive relations
are a double-edged sword for women: The
mere existence of social relationships means
women have more support available to them
but also that women have greater caregiving
burdens. This is a likely explanation for why
structural measures of support are more
consistently related to men’s health than
women’s health. However, the functional
aspects of support seem to be more strongly
related to women’s than men’s health.Marriage is associated with better
health for both women and men, but
men accrue more benefits than women.
Longitudinal research shows that initial
health also influences the likelihood of
getting married; however, even adjusting
for these selection effects, marriage benefits
health. Marriage is more beneficial for
men because it provides greater support
and promotes better health behavior,
and because men are more satisfied with
marriage compared to women.
The loss of marriage through
widowhood seems to have more adverseM11_HELG0185_04_SE_C11.indd 437 6/21/11 12:43 PM