Date of Submission
Spring 2017
Academic Programs and Concentrations
Psychology
Project Advisor 1
Kristin Lane
Project Advisor 2
Richard Gordon
Abstract/Artist's Statement
Sexual assaulters develop from a culture of learned norms, misunderstanding of consent, and inefficacy in bystander intervention. The most significant sexual assault prevention programs teach individuals to dissociate from this culture, by changing their perceptions, knowledge, and behaviors. However, the lack of long-term effects in these programs depicts a vital loophole in their design. In order to change the culture that breeds sexual assaulters, a program cannot focus solely on individuals’ growth, but must ensure a movement of change in the culture itself. Transformational Leadership (Bass, 1985), a style of leadership in which leaders inspire their followers to become leaders, may be the next step in sustainably changing this culture. This proposed program will teach high school students (N = 150) from three different California schools about norms which contribute to sexual assault perpetration, while also training them to become transformational leaders in combatting these norms. After the semester-long program ends, trained students in the experimental condition should significantly increase their Transformational Leadership scores. These trained leaders and 100 random representative high school students in each school should significantly decrease their scores in rape myth acceptance and sexual objectification of others, and should significantly increase their scores in consent knowledge, and bystander intervention attitudes. Significant results for this proposed program could create a movement of changing agents in the prevention of sexual assault perpetration.
Open Access Agreement
Open Access
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Warner, Sage Marissa, "Combatting the Core of Sexual Assault: Training Youth to Become Transformational Leaders in Sexual Assault Perpetration Prevention" (2017). Senior Projects Spring 2017. 330.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2017/330
This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.
Included in
Civic and Community Engagement Commons, Community Health Commons, Community Psychology Commons, Leadership Studies Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, Public Health Education and Promotion Commons, Sexuality and the Law Commons, Social Psychology Commons, Women's Health Commons