Knowledge of Adult Sexual Orientation Influences Perceptions of Adult-Child Interactions

ABSTRACT

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a highly prevalent concern that carries lifelong consequences for the survivor. Many instances of CSA may be prevented when people correctly recognize precursory behaviors to abuse; however, research has shown that people’s biases color their perceptions of behavior. Past research demonstrated sexual and gender minority adults are more likely to erroneously be seen as predators and face harsher consequences compared to straight adults. The current study examined how knowledge of adults’ sexual orientation influenced perceptions regarding the nature of adult-child interactions. Participants in the current study read a series of vignettes describing interactions between adults and children where the adult sexual orientation (straight male, gay male) and the gender of the child (male, female) were manipulated. Participants then indicated whether they believed the behavior to be predatory or innocuous. Participants were less likely to recognize dangerous behaviors when the adult was described as a straight man interacting with a male child, suggesting that harmful adult-child interactions are more likely to go undetected in these instances.

KEYWORDS:

• Child sexual abuse
• child maltreatment
• sexual orientation
• adult-child interactions

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Jared Ruchensky and Alexa Callahan for their feedback on a draft of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical standards and informed consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation [institutional and national] and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

Notes

¹ In the vignettes, sexual orientation was either described as gay/straight or homosexual/heterosexual. However, homosexual/heterosexual terminology is inconsistent with common descriptors of sexual minority populations. Therefore, we will use the term “gay” to refer to similar-sex attraction, and “straight” to refer to other-sex attraction in the current manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Daniella K. Cash

Daniella K. Cash, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at Sam Houston State University. She graduated from Louisiana State University and her research interests focus on the interplay between social and cognitive psychology within the legal system. This includes factors such as eyewitness identification, jury decision-making, deception detection, and sexual violence.

Kayla D. Spenard

Kayla D. Spenard, M.A., is a graduate student in the Clinical Psychology, Ph.D. program at Sam Houston State University. Her research focuses on perceptions of grooming behavior in child sexual abuse and how to recognize and prevent future abuse.

Tiffany D. Russell

Tiffany D. Russell, PhD is an assistant professor of clinical psychology at Sam Houston State University. She graduated from the University of North Dakota in 2018. Her research program focuses on violence perpetration, personality disorders, childhood maltreatment, and mental health in underrepresented populations.