Reading erotic tales where the man is sexually dominant over the woman may lead men to believe women desire forceful submission in real life, a study suggests.

University of Queensland and Griffith University researchers investigated how different submissive and dominant gender roles in erotica influences how men and women think about gender in reality, as well as how it impacts their arousal.

Nearly 500 heterosexual male and female participants read one of three erotic stories depicting male dominance, female dominance or no dominance for the Fifty Shades Flipped study, which was published in the Journal of Sex Research last week.

Co-author Emily Harris from UQ said the main, and most alarming finding, was that men who read the story where the male was dominant and the female was submissive increased their rape myth acceptance.

Rape myth acceptance is defined in the study as a set of beliefs that trivialise rape by assuming that the victim consented to, or was responsible for, being raped.

"[These men] were more likely to believe a woman who is raped might enjoy that rape and may have been asking for it by what she was wearing, for example," Ms Harris told the ABC.

The study importantly notes that men's increase in rape myth acceptance occurred despite the fact the story did not depict arousal in response to rape.

For women, when reading the erotica where the male was dominant, they reported more benevolent sexism than men.

"Women are more likely to buy into this idea women should be chased, adopting quite traditional roles, [for example] women need to be looked after by men," Ms Harris said.

Relationships Australia Queensland manager Val Holden told the ABC she did not believe mediums like erotic novels were wholly responsible for men's views or actions towards women, but could play a part.

"It influences but isn't the driver ... certain personalities seek out that [kind of content]," she said.

"It also goes back to your childhood and how your parents were ... all of that impacts how a man treats a woman."

Findings from the 2013 National Community Attitudes towards Violence Against Women Survey revealed one in six in the community agree with the notion that women say "no" when they mean "yes".

One in 10 endorsed the view that if a woman does not physically resist, even if protesting verbally, then it is not really rape.

What turns us on?

The study found arousal levels did not vary depending on who was the dominant figure in the story.

"We were expecting to find women to be more aroused by stories where men were dominant, like Fifty Shades of Grey, but we found women were equally aroused by all the erotic stories — even those with female dominance," Ms Harris said.

It was the same finding for the male participants.

Ms Harris and fellow researcher Fiona Barlow wrote the erotic stories for the study in order to carefully control the differences.

"We had a good time Googling and getting the thesaurus out for different words for thrust," Ms Harris said.

For inspiration they read erotica online and classic novels including The Lustful Turk and The Story of O.

Ms Harris said although it could be argued the majority of erotic reading was aimed at women, the discussion around such tales, like the Fifty Shades of Grey series, also influenced men.

"Those novels are discussed so much in the media, that in itself can influence men. Men might think because women enjoy reading about this kind of sexual experience it's what they want in real life — but fantasy is different to reality," she said.

"Fantasy is a safe space where you can enjoy whatever it is you're interested in and we must distinguish what happens in the fantasy realm is not necessarily the same as reality."

Ms Harris said a way to create such a balance was to have a more diverse range of erotica made available.

"It can be very dangerous if we're only reading one type of narrative," she said