Stigmatization of Paraphilias and Psychological Conditions Linked to Sexual Offending

ABSTRACT

Except for pedophilia, little is known about public attitudes toward paraphilias and psychological conditions that are considered risk factors for sexual offending. In the present study we sought to compare the stigma attached to pedophilia with attitudes toward sexual sadism and antisocial tendencies (Study 1, N = 720) and with attitudes toward necrophilia and zoophilia (Study 2, N = 210) in convenience samples of community individuals. When investigating social distance intentions both studies explicitly referred to people with paraphilic sexual interests or antisocial tendencies who had not committed any crimes. In both studies, people with pedophilia emerged as highly stigmatized even though most participants showed awareness that pedophilic interests cannot be chosen or changed at will. The present studies solidify the evidence that pedophilia occupies a place in the public consciousness as less deserving of acceptance than most other sexual offending risk-relevant conditions, including ones that compare in terms of rarity.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the students of course P WS16 of the Medical School Berlin involved in this project for their assistance in data collection and data entry.

Notes

¹ Control analyses comparing the dependent variables using participant source as the independent variable showed that there were no systematic differences.