Narcissism, Empathy, and Rape Myth Acceptance Among Heterosexual College Males

The perpetration of rape and sexual assault on college campuses is a pervasive problem that has been linked to narcissism and rape myth acceptance. Studies evaluating empathy priming-based prevention programs have yielded mixed results, and empathy priming has not been examined specifically among high-risk populations. The present study sought to address this gap in the literature by exploring how empathy priming interacts with narcissistic traits to predict heterosexual college males’ ( n = 74) rape myth acceptance. Participants read a vignette depicting a date rape and were either primed to be empathetic or objective. Results showed that baseline empathy and narcissism were negatively and positively associated with rape myth acceptance, respectively. After priming, participants low on narcissistic traits had lower rape myth acceptance when they were in the empathy (vs. the objective) condition, whereas individuals high in narcissistic traits had higher rape myth acceptance when they were in the empathy priming condition. Findings suggest that males who were at higher risk of perpetration more strongly endorsed problematic beliefs about rape after being asked to empathize with a fictional rape victim. Future prevention and intervention studies should incorporate measures of personality traits and continue to explore the possibility that empathy priming may produce the opposite of the intended effect among high-risk males.