Citation

Dickinson OB, Roberts ME. J. Interpers. Violence 2024; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/08862605241253035

PMID

38769885

Abstract

Research on sexual assault has shown that victim, perpetrator, and participant characteristics can influence evaluations of an assault. However, the studies have not examined a possible main effect or interactions from respectively introducing the victim or perpetrator first in an assault description, and previous studies have used participant samples with little diversity. We conducted two studies with factorial between-groups designs that varied presentation order in addition to victim and perpetrator stereotypicality and then assessed the impacts on participants' judgments of sexual assault scenarios. We used the online marketplace Prolific to collect large, diverse samples of participants, and in the second study, we collected roughly equal sample sizes of individuals who identified as Black females/males and White females/males. Our results indicate that multiple factors-including victim and perpetrator stereotypicality, presentation order, and participants' gender identities-significantly influenced judgments of the sexual assault, and there were numerous interactions. The results provide strongest support for a spreading activation model in which each factor can influence a participant's judgment of the other factors and the overall scenario. As such, the findings may bear on the legal handling of sexual assault cases as well as suggesting how different presentation formats and emphases in media coverage may sway the court of public opinion.

Language: en

Keywords

order effect; perpetrator stereotypes; rape; sexual assault; victim stereotypes