In the past decade, sexual assault cases have increased: media coverage of cases such as Sarah Everard and Giséle Pelicot have increased awareness of sexual violence against women and the role attitudes towards consent plays in sexual offending. Research finds that negative attitudes towards consent can influence behaviour, due to enactment of schemas that dismiss the importance of obtaining explicit consent. Most people prefer non-verbal consent communication: however, this presents risk for misinterpretation, considering the ambiguity in definitions of consent. Research reveals the effects on attitudes towards consent resulting from the increasing availability of pornography with access to violent or paraphilic categories. Pornography relies on non-verbal consent communication, often depicting women as passive, and demonstrating explicit consent as unnatural. As well as pornography use, Dark Triad personality traits (Machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism) are associated with characteristics that indicate dismissive attitudes towards consent. This association, alongside the correlation between pornography use and attitudes towards consent, inform the current research question to examine Dark Triad traits as potential moderators for the relationship between pornography category use and attitudes towards consent. This study recruited 199 participants who completed questionnaires measuring Dark Triad traits, frequency of pornography use, pornography category consumption, attitudes towards obtaining consent and responses to a vignette, depicting a consent, acquiescence, or rape scenario. Subsequent analysis of results revealed that pornography category consumption predicted more negative attitudes towards consent, whereas frequency of pornography use did not, and none of the Dark Triad traits moderated this relationship. These results could inform interventions for sexual offending, targeting maladaptive schemas affected by pornography’s depiction of consent. However, adaptations to the design of this study are necessary to examine the role Dark Triad traits play in this relationship and provide more evidence for how negative attitudes towards consent translate to behaviour.
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