Sofia Persson, Tom Hostler
Abstract Sexual violence against women and girls is a serious concern, and past research suggests that evolutionary theories have the potential to promote victim-blaming attitudes among laypeople. This registered report investigated whether evolutionary explanations for male aggression increase biological essentialism, and whether this, in turn, impacts attributions about an ‘ambiguous’ rape vignette. This two-part study collected data from 606 demographically representative UK participants. Science outreach videos were used as the experimental manipulation following facts about men’s sexual aggression: an evolutionary explanation presented by David Buss, a social explanation presented by Jackson Katz, and a control condition (video about nature). Then, participants completed a biological essentialism measure, read a rape vignette and completed measures of rape attributions. Our results indicated that the evolutionary condition led to higher victim culpability as compared to the social condition, through an increase in biological essentialism. There were no effects of the experimental conditions when compared to the nature video. There were no effects on perpetrator culpability. We conclude that evolutionary psychology can increase victim-blaming attitudes through an increase in the belief that gender roles are natural and immutable, and that this can be understood through the theoretical framework ‘the cultural scaffolding of rape’.