Can Artificial Intelligence Predict Sexual Aggression?

Source: Don Hankins/flickr

Single ladies looking for a guy - if you see someone on a dating app or website, what do you want to know about him? You'll probably check out his picture, the town where he lives, and what he does. Maybe you look for someone who has the same hobbies as you, or who shares you views on family and religion. But how about issues around sex, consent, and aggression? Maybe that guy you're looking at is a sexual narcissist who feels entitled to sex when he wants it. Would you want to know if your date thought that when women refuse sex, they really want to be forced? Or that he would be willing to drug a woman in order to have sex with her?

Signs of these traits can be hard to spot in online dating profiles. Even if you check out a guy's Facebook or Twitter pages, there may be no obvious indicators of how he feels about these issues. But it's possible that artificial intelligence (AI) can offer some help. AI has already been proven effective at using social media data to identify personality traits, whether someone is a narcissist, whether they are depressed, and their political leanings, intelligence, and coping styles. It is not a stretch to imagine it might also be able to give insight about issues around sexual attitudes, as well.

For this, or any AI to work, we need to be able to measure people's attitudes and then to access their social media data. This allows us to build algorithms and models that can read the data and infer what someone's attitude is. All kinds of social media data can be useful to AI for making these inferences: the things they like, how quickly and how often they respond to others, the structure of the language they use, the friends they have and the connections among their friends, and the kinds of photos they post are just a few examples.

Getting social media data is relatively easy, but how can we measure someone's attitude about sex and relationships? It turns out, there are a few psychological surveys that are well-studied and often used in psychological research that can be helpful.

The Hurlbert Index of Sexual Narcissism [1] - Sexual narcissists believe they are exceptionally good at sex, that they are entitled to it, and that they deserve to be praised for it. They also tend to lack empathy for their partners and resist intimacy. The survey asks people to rate how strongly they agree with statements like "A relationship can keep one from engaging in a lot of fulfilling sexual activities.", "I know some pretty unique sexual techniques.", and "My partner seldom gives me the sexual praise I deserve.".

The Token Resistance to Sex Scale[ 2] measures how much someone believes that even if they say "no", certain actions communicate that women really want sex anyway. People are asked to how much they agree with statements like "Many times a woman will pretend she doesn't want to have intercourse because she doesn't want to seem too loose, but she's really hoping the man will force her." and "Women usually say 'no' to sex when they really mean 'yes.'"

The Aggressive Sexual Behavior Inventory [3] - Although the survey does not use the term, this essentially measures how likely a man is to engage in sexual assault or violence around sex. People are asked to rate how much they agree with statements like "I have warned a woman that she could get hurt if she resisted me, so she should relax and enjoy it.", "I have forced a woman to have sex with me and some of my pals.", and "I have told a woman that her refusal to have sex with me was changing the way I felt about her."

Taken together, these surveys provide a unique lens onto how men think about consent and aggression around sex.

If many men were to take these surveys honestly and share anonymously share information from their social media profiles, we will have everything we need to build artificial intelligence that could offer some insight into a man's sexual aggression. How to responsibly use such technology is another question, but the work begins by studying whether or not AI can even detect these attitudes from social media.

If you're a man who dates women, you can help make this happen! We are running a study right now to collect this data and you can participate by clicking this link.

https://umdsurvey.umd.edu/jfe/form/SV_bxsFkpk9GOYXUO1

If you just want to check out the surveys in more depth, you can do so by following the references.