STEPHANIE THORNTON
Fantasy is thought to play a key role in sexual aggression. There is increasing
evidence that rape and other sadistic fantasies play a part in sexual
aggressions (e.g. Lalumiere and Quinsey (1994) and the relationship between
sexual fantasy and sexual offences against children is well established (Murphy,
Haynes, and Worley, 1991).
Such fantasies are not solely found amongst convicted sex offenders but it
should not be supposed that they are harmless amongst unconvicted men. Malamuth
and his associates have found rape fantasies to be predictive of future sexual
aggression amongst unconvicted males.
Discussions of the role of sexual fantasy in offending often seem to treat it
as a given. That is, as something which is either determined by biology or by
early developmental history. Thus, at least for adult offenders, sadistic or
paedophilic fantasies are generally taken to be fixed characteristics,
modifiable solely by special interventions such as the administration of drugs
or the use of conditioning procedures.
An alternative approach would be to see fantasy as responsive, at least in part,
to the same kinds of contemporary cognitive and motivational factors as might be
expected to influence any other kind of behaviour.
The research described in this chapter tries to explore that possibility. In
particular, the hypothesis investigated was that empathic reactions might
interfere with fantasies of engaging in anti-social sexual activities.
Empathy itself is a complex construct which is too often treated in an
undifferentiated manner. It is possible to distinguish at least four phases in
an empathic response to someone else's distress:
 | Interest - being interested in someone else's point of view or experience; |
| identification - trying to identify what their perspective is, something which may be done with greater or lesser accuracy; |
| Attitude - reacting to what one takes the other's experience to be, where the reaction may be sympathetic, antagonistic, indifferent, or merely confused distress and |
| Action - acting on the basis of this attitude, something which may be more or less effectively done. |
Individuals characteristic empathic responses may differ at all four phases.
So one person might be very interested in other people's point of view but quite
indifferent to their distress, whilst another person might be very sympathetic
to other's distress but hopeless at determining when they actually were
distressed, and so on.
It seems possible that at least the first three phases of empathic reactions
might be relevant to someone's inclination to fantasise about anti-social sexual
behaviour. This study exported these possibilities by examining the correlation
between various kinds of fantasy and variables
which would operate at different phases of an empathic reaction.
102 male college students. Subjects were recruited by approaching students who were pouring through some of the main concourses of the university concerned. The nature of the study was explained and potential subjects were told that by participating they would enter a lottery which would enable one of them to win a small cash prize.
Each subject individually completed a set of questionnaires. They were
advised that their answers would be treated as confidential and, since they did
not record their names, were effectively anonymous.
The measures used are described in terms of the phase of empathy to which they
relate.
| Interest - the Perspective -Taking scale From Davis's Interpersonal Reactivity Index was used to measure interest in trying to see other people's point of view; |
| Identification - accuracy of recognising other people's distress was assessed using Hanson's Empathy for Women test. This assesses the subject's ability to distinguish sexual approaches which a woman is likely to experience as abusive; |
| Attitude - response to recognising distress was measured by two scales, the Empathic Concern scale from Davis's questionnaire and the Eysenek's Empathy scale. The former measure focuses more on sympathy with someone else's reaction whereas the latter focuses more on sharing that reaction. |
Fantasy was measured using the Wilson Sexual Fantasy questionnaire. Factor analysis of the items from this questionnaire for the present sample suggested four conceptually coherent fantasy themes:
| Sadistic Fantasies - items focused on forcing someone to do something, tying them up, hurting a sexual partner, whipping or spanking them; |
| BIF Fantasies - a range of deviant fantasies which clustered together, interest in Bestiality, Incest, and Flashing; |
| Indiscriminate Fantasies - interest in having multiple partners, taking part in orgies, anonymous sex etc. and |
| Intimacy Fantasies - i.e. fantasies of having sex with a loved partner in a romantic setting |
Reliabilities for scales based on these factors were between 0.8 and 0.9.
The first three fantasy themes are here regarded as fantasies about
"anti-social" sexual activity whereas the fourth (Intimacy) theme,
obviously, is not.
Correlations between the fantasy themes and the variables representing the various phases of empathy were calculated.
| Interest - the perspective taking scale did not correlate significantly with any fantasy theme. |
| Identification - the ability to recognise sexual interactions which women will find unpleasant showed significant negative correlations with each of the kinds of fantasy relating to anti-social sexual behaviour. Correlations varied between 0.27 and 0.40. These are shown in more detail in table 1. |
| Attitude - neither of the attitude phase empathy variables correlated with use of anti-social sexual fantasies. However, the Asyne Empathy scale correlated positively (0.22) with intimacy fantasies. |
Fantasy theme |
Correlation with empathy for women |
Significance level |
Sadistic fantasie |
-0.27 | 0.05 |
BIF fantasies |
-0.44 | 0.001 |
Indiscriminate fantasies |
-0.30 | 0.005 |
A small number of subjects reported having exclusively homosexual fantasies. These subjects did not differ from the rest of the subjects and excluding them from the analysis did not change the overall pattern or magnitude of the results.
A correlational study of this kind cannot establish that empathic reactions have a causal relationship to fantasy. Nevertheless the results obtained are consistent with such a relationship and do support the general proposition that a person's fantasy life is, at least to some extent, under the control of the same cognitive and motivational variables that influence current behaviour.
This must open the possibility of interventions which are aimed at these
cognitive and motivational variables having an impact on an offender's fantasy
life. Modification of sexual fantasy need not depend solely on conditioning or
drug treatments.
Fantasy modification work would normally be designed to both weaken anti-social
fantasies and strengthen more appropriate fantasies. The present results suggest
that if this is to be approached through empathy both the cognitive,
Identification Phase of empathy and the affective Attitudinal Phase of empathy
will need to be strengthened.
It is not clear how far these interventions would need to be offence focused. It
would seem likely that offence-focused interventions would be most critical to
build up the kind of cognitive empathy which would make anti-social fantasies
less attractive though this kind of empathy can probably also be built up
through Cognitive Skills programmes. On the other hand the sort of empathy
linked to the development of intimacy fantasies seems to be of a more general
emotional kind and so deficits in this area may be to do with the offender's
general emotional life. It is not clear how directly relevant offence-focused
work is to that and some other kind of intervention may be required.
Finally, it must be emphasised that the relationships found here between empathy
and fantasy are at most only of moderate strength. It would befoolish to suppose
that enhancing relevant aspects of empathy will be sufficient to moderate the
fantasy life of all offenders. Nevertheless, where it does not suffice by
itself, it may help motivate offenders to use other techniques.
Davis, M.H. (1983) Measuring individual differences in empathy evidence for a multi-dimensional approach. 'Journal of Personality and Social Psychology' 44, 113-126.
Eysenck. S.G.B., Pearson, P.R., Easting, G. & Allsop, J. (1985) Age norms for impulsiveness, venturesomeness, and empathy in adults. 'Personality and Individual Differences, 6, 613-620.
Hanson, R K & Scott, H. (1994) Assessing perspective-taking among sexual offenders, non-sexual criminals, and non-offenders. Unpublished Manuscript.
Lalumiere, M.L & Quinsey, V.L. (1994) The discriminability of rapists from non-rapists using phallometric measures: a meta-analysis. 'Criminal Just ice and Behaviour, 21, 150-175.
Murphy W.D., Haynes M.R., & Worley, P.J. (1991) Assessment of adult sexual interest. In C.R.Hollin & K.Howells (Eds) ' Clinical approaches to sexual offenders and their victims', 77-92, West Sussex, Wiley.
Wilson, G. (1978) 'The secrets of sexual fantasy'. London: J.M Dent and Sons.