Alcohol and Links with Sexual Aggression

Sexual aggression – the perpetration of unwanted sexual acts without a partner’s freely given consent – remains a pervasive, global public health problem. Cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental research suggests a robust association between alcohol use and sexual aggression. In an effort to identify malleable intervention targets, extensive research has sought to identify the individual-, event-, and community-level factors that contribute to alcohol’s effects on sexual aggression. This review first describes four theoretical frameworks through which researchers investigate alcohol’s effects on sexual aggression and provides an overview of the methodologies employed by researchers to examine this association. Individual-level factors, including cognitive, emotional, and personality-related variables, are discussed as possible mechanisms through which alcohol influences sexual aggression, followed by a discussion of the event-level factors, such as setting and relationship between the perpetrator and victim. Because sexual aggression is situated within a social context, this chapter also includes a brief description of community-level social norms as facilitators of sexual aggression. With this background in the empirical literature established, the review summarizes the growing literature on alcohol-involved, sexual aggression prevention and intervention research.