Rape victims

Human subjects perform simple, relatively unconstrained, game-like computer tasks. "Meso-level" measures of behavioral complexity and time-dependencies (including entropies, grammatical complexity estimates and run statistics) are derived and computed. Individual behavioral differences in the resulting complexity measures are robust and, in a temporal-forcing paradigm, are statistically significantly related to the same individual's scores on a range of personality and demographic variables. Through an experimental manipulation and the statistical selection of maximally useful predictor sets personality and demographic variables are united in a "macro-level" temperament typology, based on "micro-level" behavioral tendencies. Further, I can compute a parameter value of a one dimensional dynamical system, the symmetric tent map, matched to the symbol sequence "meso-level" parities of the subject. When this parameter is used in the iterated map, it produces sequences that are of the same autocorrelation "category" and share much of the fine structure of the autocorrelograms of the subjects to which the map parameter had been matched.

Women have recurrently faced the adaptive problem of rape over evolutionary history. Little research has investigated the potential evolved psychological mechanisms for rape avoidance that women may possess. Here I review evolutionary perspectives on rape avoidance. I follow this review with the results of two studies conducted to design a measure of women's rape avoidance, known as the Rape Avoidance Inventory (RAI). Study 1A included 99 women who self-reported acts they do or might do specifically to avoid being raped. Study 1B included 144 women who filled out a preliminary inventory of rape avoidance behaviors. I used their responses to construct the RAI. In Study 3, I develop and test a number of hypotheses derived from evolutionary psychological theory, using data derived from the sample of women in Study 1B. I conclude by discussing limitations and possible future directions for rape avoidance research.