Sexual Scripts and Sexual Consent: Gender Stereotypes, Music-Media Messages, and Sexual Consent Expectancies Among College Men and Women

The pervasiveness of sexual assault among college women prompted examination of college students' sexual-consent expectancies using sexual scripting theory as a framework. We aimed to understand how personal beliefs, experiences with sexual violence, and dominant cultural gendered sexual scripts in music media inform sexual-consent expectancies among a sample of primarily White heterosexual college students at a northwestern university (n = 364). Participants viewed music videos with sexual and objectifying content and reported their perceptions of how women were portrayed. Linear mixed modeling with Maximum Likelihood with interactions by biological sex revealed associations between past sexual victimization and lower expectancies to adhere to a sexual partner's consent wishes. Men with a history of perpetrating sexual violence had lower expectancies to ask for consent, and women with more traditional sexual stereotypes had lower expectancies to seek consent or refuse unwanted sex. Having lower expectancies to adhere to a partner's consent wishes was associated with holding more traditional sexual stereotypes for both men and women. Participants who perceived women as powerlessness in viewed music videos had lower expectancies to ask for consent from a sexual partner, to refuse unwanted sexual advances, and to adhere to a decision regarding sexual consent. Through the lens of sexual scripting theory, results advance understanding of how the intersection of biological sex, experiences of sexual violence, gendered beliefs, and cultural scripts in music media inform young adults' sexual expectancies and potential for sexual risk. Implications for prevention include addressing gendered sexual scripts to reduce ambiguity around sexual consent among college students. Media-based interventions are discussed as a strategy toward this end.