The thematic content of graffiti as a nonreactive indicator of male and female attitudes

Abstract

Graffiti written by men and by women were collected from the public restrooms of a large Eastern university. Based, in part, on the notion that graffiti are accurate indicators of group attitudes, frequencies of graffiti occurrence within 16 sexual and nonsexual content categories were analyzed to determine differences from results of previous research and between content currently expressed in male and female graffiti. Results indicated that women wrote more graffiti than did men, and that women's graffiti were more likely to express hostile, sexual, or issue‐related content. The inability of several psychosexual hypotheses to account for observed differences in graffiti content, and the difficulties inherent in the use of graffiti as nonreactive measures in social‐psychological research were discussed.