Variations in community sentiment toward affirmative consent policies

ABSTRACT

University affirmative consent (AC) policies indicate that potential sexual partners must give a clear ‘yes,’ confirming that they wish to engage in sexual activity. A lack of resistance or a failure to say ‘no’ is not enough to convey consent. These policies are critically important to both men and women, as they convey whether a student has committed a crime; yet, little is known about sentiment toward such policies. In general, understanding community sentiment is important to ensure that legal actions have the support (and ultimately, compliance) of the people who must obey them. This study investigated the support of two communities: students who are directly affected by AC polices, and community members who are not. Participants indicated their support for affirmative consent policies, beliefs about the effectiveness of affirmative consent policies, and beliefs about whether they themselves or college students would be able to comply with the policies. Sentiment toward affirmative consent polices was high (positive), although agreement that college students would be able to follow these policies was lower. Further, there was variation in sentiment, with females and students having more positive sentiment compared to males and community members. Implications for policymakers and education about AC policies are offered.

KEYWORDS:

• Affirmative consent
• sexual assault
• consent
• gender
• community sentiment
• university
• policy

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Deborah Davis and Emily Wood for their contributions to this project. Both were of great help in developing the research, but declined authorship on the publication. Preliminary results were presented with Dr. Davis and Dr. Wood at the 2017 conference for the American Psychology-Law Society in Seattle, WA. Partial funding was provided by the Interdisciplinary Social Psychology Ph.D. Program at the University of Nevada, Reno. The author has no financial interests or conflict of interest related to this research. All IRB guidelines were followed to ensure ethical treatment of participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Data for this study were collected simultaneously with another research project (Miller, 2020) that had a different purpose. Both studies used the same general sample. However, none of the measurements reported here were used in that study and thus there was no overlapping analyses or research questions. The two purposes were different enough to require separate reports.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Monica Miller

Monica K. Miller is a Foundation Professor with a split appointment between the Criminal Justice department and the Interdisciplinary Social Psychology Ph.D. program. She is also an adjunct faculty at the Grant Sawyer Center for Justice Studies and the Judicial Studies PhD Program. Miller received her Juris Doctorate from the University of Nebraska College of Law in 2002 and her doctorate in social psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2004.