Date of Award
12-24-2025
Date Published
January 2026
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Social Science (MSSc)
Department
Psychology
Advisor(s)
Sarah Woolf-King
Second Advisor
Aesoon Park
Keywords
college party culture;college students;sexual victimization;stress response
Subject Categories
Clinical Psychology | Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
Sexual victimization of college women is a significant public health concern on U.S. college campuses. Traditional research on the human stress response has focused on the "fight-or-flight" model, which may not adequately capture female-typical responses in stress-inducing situations. Using a mixed-methods design, we sought to determine whether the "tend-and-befriend" stress response serves as a potential correlate of sexual victimization among college women and examine whether it contributes additional variance beyond established correlates of sexual victimization such as alcohol use, history of sexual victimization, and involvement in campus party culture. The study was conducted in two phases. In Phase I, 128 undergraduate women completed self-report questionnaires assessing these variables, along with their frequency of sexual victimization before and after starting college. Phase II involved a thematic analysis of narratives from a subset of 10 participants who reported experiences of sexual victimization, where themes of the tend-and-befriend response and other established correlates were explored. A hurdle model revealed that greater involvement in campus party culture (IRR = 1.34, p < .05) and historical sexual victimization experiences (IRR = 5.82, p < .05) was associated with higher sexual victimization frequency, while tend-and-befriend endorsement was not significant. Thematic analysis for Phase II data revealed themes of alcohol involvement, tend-and-befriend responses, and persistence strategies leveraged by the perpetrators. Findings from the current study highlight the presence of tend-and-befriend behaviors during unwanted sexual encounters and lend support to possible event-level associations with increased victimization vulnerability among college women.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Presutti, Emily Kathleen, "Investigating the "Tend-and-Befriend" Stress Response as a Risk Factor for Sexual Victimization among College Women" (2025). Theses - ALL. 998.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/998
