Role of Psychopathy, Machiavellianism and Hostile Sexism as Determinants of Rape Myth Acceptance: Multigroup Moderated Mediation Analysis of Gender

Abstract

This study examines the role of psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and hostile sexism as psychological predictors of rape myth acceptance (RMA), with particular emphasis on the moderating role of gender, through a multigroup moderated mediation analysis. Using the Dark Triad and gender socialization theoretical models, this study examined how dark personality and sexist beliefs form harmful beliefs about sexual violence. Female and male participants completed accepted measures of psychopathy, Machiavellianism, hostile sexism, and acceptance of rape myths. Structural equation modeling (SEM) with multigroup analysis was used to see if gender impacted the indirect mediation paths. The results indicated that for both psychopathy and Machiavellianism, hostile sexism meaningfully mediated and was more robust for males. Gender moderated the nature of both the direct and indirect paths which indicates a different pathway in the formation of rape-supportive beliefs.