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Follow Us On FacebookDr. Jacquelyn White
Professor Jacquelyn White's current research focuses on the causes of sexual aggression and victimization in young women and men. Some of her conclusions will be published soon in a chapter entitled “Gendered Aggression across the Lifespan” in the Encyclopedia of Gender. The chapter is the result of her analysis of data from a five year longitudinal study funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health, the Center for Disease Control, and the National Institute of Justice. The data concern dating violence and sexual assault among adolescents and college students. As the project has developed, she says, it is obvious that childhood victimization is important in the process. Although trained as a social psychologist, she more and more calls on the tools and insights of developmental psychology in her work.
White has been surprised by the breadth of dating violence. Young women who were victims in high school often continue to be victims in college; and the young men who abuse them in college also began the pattern in high school. Young women will readily report their victimization to a researcher. Young men can more easily relate their experiences as a perpetrator if they rationalize the behavior as a result of alcohol and drug abuse. Interestingly, young women who have been victimized are also likely to be aggressive in relationships.
White is the Linda Arnold Carlisle Professor of Women's and Gender Studies as well as a Professor of Psychology. The Carlisle Professorship as well as a “Dean's Initiative” grant from Dr. Tim Johnston enabled her to obtain good pilot data for another research project. White collaborated with two other psychology professors--Dr. Matthew Paradise, a clinical psychologist, and Dr. Susan Calkins, a developmental psychologist—as well as a graduate student—Megan Key, whose work on the project was the basis for her Master's thesis. The team investigated the emotional makeup and childhood background of teenage mothers. They were interested in the role that emotion regulation plays in teenage pregnancy and have concluded that there is a physiological and biological component.
She is a member of several task forces and advisory boards that focus on teenage sexual behavior. One program, “Wise Guys,” encourages responsible sexual behavior in young males. Locally and nationally, the rate of teenage pregnancy has plummeted in the last decade, she explains, and is partly the result of a growing sense of responsibility about sexual behavior among teenagers—particularly young men. “Wise Guys” is the kind of program that has helped. White has also acted as a consultant to the US Navy examining the connection of pre-military experiences of physical and sexual abuse with physical and sexual abuse in the military. “I am never bored,” she says. Her research interests are complementary, and she profits from the Dean's encouragement of interdisciplinary collaboration.
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