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Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment
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Implicit Cognitive Distortions and Sexual Offending

Stephen Mihailides

Department of Psychology, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Grant J. Devilly

Center for Neuropsychology, Swinburne University, Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia, gdevilly{at}swin.edu.au

Tony Ward

School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

This work develops and tests the semantic-motivation hypothesis of sexual offenders' implicit cognitions. This hypothesis posits that sexual offenders' cognitive distortions emerge at the interface between implicit motivation and cognition. The semantic-motivation hypothesis is used to guide the development of 3 implicit association tests (IATs). These IATs were used to test for the existence of 3 expected child sexual offender implicit cognitive distortions in child sexual offenders ("children as sexual beings," "uncontrollability of sexuality," and "sexual entitlement-bias"). Results showed that child sexual offenders had larger IAT effects than did mainstream offenders and male and female nonoffenders for the "children as sexual beings" and the "uncontrollability of sexuality" implicit theories. Child sexual offenders also had a larger IAT effect than male and female nonoffenders for the "sexual entitlement-bias" implicit theory. Implications for the semantic-motivation hypothesis are discussed.

Key Words: Implicit Association Test • semantic-motivation • sexual offending • cognitive distortions.

Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, Vol. 16, No. 4, 333-350 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/107906320401600406
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