Both alcohol and exposure to violent pornography have been related to sexual aggression toward women. One link in understanding this relationship may lie in understanding the role of men's empathic responding to a female rape victim. This study examined men's empathic responses toward a female victim in a violent pornographic story as well as their self-reported likelihood to behave like the assailant. The degree to which the personality construct hypermasculinity might moderate the effects of alcohol and situational factors was of central interest. One hundred twenty-one men, recruited from the community, participated in a between-subjects experiment varying subjects' beverage (alcohol vs. placebo vs. tonic), story characters' beverage (alcohol vs. mineral water), and female story character's emotional response (pleasure vs. distress). Results showed that hypermasculinity moderated the effects of the manipulated variables on empathic responses to the female character. The manipulated variables also interacted to affect subjects' responses independently of hypermasculinity.
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