BIO

I'm a sophomore from New York studying to be an art therapist, double majoring in Psychology and Studio Art. Interdisciplinary research involving psychology, sociology, and philosophy is of special interest to me. I'm involved in philosophy research through UROP, and neuroscience research outside of the program on campus.

Analyzing Consent Cross-Culturally: Building a Framework to Accommodate Social Understanding

Abstract

Consent has been a topic of recent philosophical debate, and understanding how consent is given and what that agreement looks like is important to philosophical debates and everyday life applications. The concept of consent is embedded in the agreements we make, like consent to medical procedures, consent to loan agreements, or consent to sexual acts. Outlined markers of valid consent are crucial to having fair and morally permissible agreements. Consent relies on cultural understanding as well as implied and explicit communication. Factors such as cultural expectations, gender roles, social scripts, and expectations can make consent harder to categorize. Our research investigates how consent presents itself across different cultures considering the three prominent fields of sexual, medical, and contractual consent. We want to form a base framework or understanding of consent so individuals can navigate what consensual agreement looks like cross-culturally. By collecting journal articles through FSU databases, we performed literature reviews to build concept maps and knowledge of the current consent terrain. The preliminary visual was based on the most compelling consent framework with cross-cultural additions. We found that consent relies on the interaction between the content of one’s agreement and the implied exchange that comes with that agreement, primarily through situational and cultural knowledge and expectations. Consent is non-transferable and applies to a specific action, but it is often applied as a continual process, and it relies on commonly understood actions and behavior that signal consent to later specific actions or patterns of social interaction.

Keywords: Consent, Philosophy, Cross-Cultural