Anti-transgender prejudice mediates the association of just world beliefs and victim blame attribution

Rape myth acceptance, victim blame attribution and Just World Beliefs: A rapid evidence assessment

The present study examined victims' attitudes to rape and rape-reporting behaviour. There were 36 Rape Victims, and approximately half reported their rape to the police (Rape Victim – Report) and half did not report their rape to the police (Rape Victim – Not Report). There were 42 Crime Victims, and approximately half reported the crime to the police (Crime Victim – Report) and half did not (Crime Victim – Not Report). Participants filled out a questionnaire which consisted of six scales: Rape Myth Acceptance, Just World Beliefs, Attitudes towards the Police, Locus of Control, the Pro-Victim scale and the Anti-Rapist scale. The results showed that Rape Victims-Not Report had significantly higher levels of Rape Myth Acceptance and Internal Locus of Control than Rape Victims-Report. However, all rape victims reported similar levels of Just World Beliefs and Attitudes towards the Police. Rape Myth Acceptance was significantly related to Just World Beliefs for crime victims but not for rape victims. Finally, crime victims had higher levels of Internal Locus of Control than rape victims.

To, on a sample of nurses and the general public, examine whether victim blame varies according to level of familiarly between victim and perpetrator. It also examines how Ambivalent Sexism and Rape Myth Acceptance impact on this. Around one in five women will be victims of sexual assault during their lifetime. The majority are acquaintance rapes, and these victims are generally attributed more blame than victims of stranger rape. Research indicates that nurses hold similar attitudes on gender roles and victim blame as do the general public. Eighty-one participants read a story depicting a sexual assault of a woman by either a stranger or an acquaintance and completed scales measuring victim blame, Ambivalent Sexism and Rape Myth Acceptance. The results of this study indicated that victim-perpetrator relationship, Benevolent Sexism, Hostile Sexism and whether the participant was a nurse contributed to the variance in attributed victim blame. Hierarchical regressions revealed that whether or not the participant was a nurse contributed to the variance in victim blame in the acquaintance rape condition, and Hostile Sexism and Benevolent Sexism contributed to the variance in victim blame in the stranger rape condition. This paper gives a novel insight into attitudes involved in victim blame in rape cases and makes a unique comparison between nurses and the general public. Findings suggest that victim blame correlates primarily with aggressively sexist attitudes and that nurses generally attribute more blame to the victim of acquaintance rape. This study has practical implications for the provision of medical services for victims of sexual assault, as it highlights problems in identifying and accessing rape victims, as well as recommending the sexual assault training of all practicing nurses.

The present paper discusses current empirical status of the Just world theory introduced several decades ago by Melvin Lerner, the content and functions of a just world belief as its central construct, and particularly, the relation between a just world belief and victim blaming and victim derogation phenomena. In the light of existing research evidence, a just world belief and a need to re-establish a ?justice? when this belief is threatened, is considered to be an adaptive mechanism that protect a belief that a world is secure and the future is predictable, as well as a confidence in the purposefulness of selfdiscipline, long-term personal investments and social rules respecting. As proposed By the just world theory, when a person faces injustice, i.e. others? (innocent victims?) suffering, his/her belief in a just world is threatened. Possible reactions to that threat comprise various rational victim helping activities, but also specific cognitive defensive strategies, including cognitive distortion, rationalization and reinterpretation of an event in order to minimize injustice or deny injustice happened at all. In the course of reinterpretation of injustice, victims are often blamed for their former actions, or derogated for their character, in order to indicate them responsible for their own fate and suffering. The findings of research studies suggest that the likelihood of employing cognitive defensive strategies rises if formal responses to crime and victimization lack or fail. This further suggests that an efficient and effective formal social response in terms of both sanctioning of offenders and reparation of victims should be considered highly important in reducing the risk of stigmatization and rejection of victims. Finally, the paper discusses the role of victim?s just world beliefs in post-trauma adaptation and coping processes. In virtue of findings from the existing research literature it may be concluded that victim?s belief in a just world is not necessarily obstructive for the adaptation and coping process. Moreover, in the research literature prevail findings telling in support of an assertion that strong just world belief serves significantly as a self-protective function.

Journal of Clinical NursingVolume 29, Issue 13-14 p. 2730-2730 CORRIGENDUMFree Access Corrigendum This article corrects the following: Attributions of victim blame in stranger and acquaintance rape: A quantitative study Sofia Persson MSc, PhD, Katie Dhingra PhD, Sarah Grogan PhD, Volume 27Issue 13-14Journal of Clinical Nursing pages: 2640-2649 First Published online: April 17, 2018 First published: 05 May 2020 https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.15241AboutSectionsPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL In “Attributions of victim blame in stranger and acquaintance rape: A quantitative study” by Persson, Dhingra, and Grogan (2018) which was published in volume 27, issue 13–14 in July 2018, the original Table 1 (descriptive results) contained some incorrect numbers. The correction has revised this. While the results of the paper are the same, the revised version below now provides a more accurate descriptive overview of the findings. TABLE 1. Means and standard deviations for each key variable N M SD Stranger victim blame 48 1.76 0.89 Acquaintance victim blame 33 2.59 1.01 Ambivalent Sexism Inventory 78 1.42 0.62 Benevolent Sexism 77 1.53 6.78 Hostile Sexism 78 1.31 0.74 AMMSA 78 2.30 0.97 REFERENCE Persson, S., Dhingra, K., & Grogan, S. (2018). Attributions of victim blame in stranger and acquaintance rape: A quantitative study. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 27, 2640– 2649. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.14351 Volume29, Issue13-14July 2020Pages 2730-2730 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Bisexual men are one of the least studied populations within the sexual intimate partner violence (SIPV) literature, despite the prevalence of SIPV being equivalent between bisexual and gay men, and greater in bisexual than heterosexual men. Consequently, it remains unclear as to what factors contribute to SIPV–related victim blame toward bisexual men. The current study utilized a mixed–methods design to investigate prejudiced attitudes toward bisexual and gay men as predictors of victim blame in the context of SIPV. Participants (N = 124) were randomly assigned to read a vignette wherein a bisexual or gay man disclosed an experience of SIPV. Participants then completed measures of victim blame and prejudiced attitudes toward bisexual or gay men. As a means of contextualizing the quantitative analyses, participants also completed a qualitative stereotype task. Results indicated that prejudiced attitudes toward both bisexual and gay men predicted victim blame, and that victim blame attributions toward bisexual and gay men did not differ. Qualitative findings indicated that there was overlap between the stereotypes attributed to bisexual and gay men, which may explain the lack of difference in victim blame toward the two groups. These results implicate prejudice reduction and controlled stereotype processing strategies as a means of reducing victim blame attributions toward sexual minority men.

Victim blaming occurs when people are unfairly held responsible for their misfortunes. According to just world theory, witnessing another's victimization threatens just world beliefs, which arouses distress. Victim blaming redeems just world beliefs, thereby reducing distress. However, negative emotions can also be resolved through emotional disclosure, suggesting that disclosure can prevent victim blaming. Two experiments confirmed this prediction. In Study 1 participants viewed a woman being victimized or a woman in a nonvictimizing conflict. Participants then disclosed or suppressed the emotions aroused by these scenes and 1 week later evaluated the woman they had viewed. Disclosure reduced blaming of the victim but did not affect blaming of the nonvictim. Further, the more distress participants disclosed, the less they blamed the victim. Study 2 replicated the primary results of Study 1 and also showed that (a) disclosure exclusively reduces blaming of victims; it does not moderate judgments of victimizers, and (b) the effects of disclosure on blaming applies across genders. These 2 studies confirm that victim blaming is a form of emotion management (per just world theory), and that emotional disclosure prevents blaming by supplying an alternative mode of emotion management. This research also suggests that emotional disclosure moderates social perception, in general.

Recent state and federal legislation such as the Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA) addresses hate crime prevention and punishment. Two pivotal questions that arise in the development of such legislation are (a) should hate crime perpetrators be subject to penalty enhancements? and (b) should protections be extended to sexual and transgender minority individuals? This article presents two studies addressing these questions employing a two-step vignette methodology. Jury-eligible community members provided sentencing and blame attribution ratings for one of three hate crime scenarios (i.e., anti-African American, antigay, or antitransgender), as well as penalty enhancement agreement (i.e., yes/no) and measures of need for affect (Study 1) and need for cognition (Study 2). Patterns of findings across studies suggest that participants comply with hate crime legislation instructions in general, but sentencing decisions are consistently moderated by whether a participant agrees with the penalty enhancement aspect of hate crime legislation. Moreover, need for affect and need for cognition differentially impact perceptions of hate crimes; need for affect demonstrated predictive associations with victim blame, whereas need for cognition moderated relations with perpetrator sentence and blame judgments. Results are discussed with emphasis on the state of federal hate crime legislation, antigay and antitransgender prejudice, and future directions in research and policy.

Violence against women, especially rapes, has been a pervasive problem in the society. It is well documented that victims of rape not only experience serious short and long-term psychological harm as a direct result of the assault, but may also be stigmatized by others (e.g., be blamed for not resisting enough). While there are sufficient studies in the developed countries that have examined how various gender and other ideologies relate to prejudiced attitudes toward rape victims, much less work has been done in developing nations such as India. Because of increased incidents of rapes in the recent past, it becomes increasingly necessary to understand the attitude people form towards rape and rape victims. Thus the present study was planned to understand the prevalent rape myths and attitudes of young adults, and to explore gender and social identity as factors influencing the attitudes towards rape and rape victims. A total of 208 participants, both males and females responded to a Rape Myth Acceptance Scale, Attitude towards Victims Scale and Causal Attribution towards Sexual Violence Scale. Results indicated that compared to male respondents, females hold lesser rape myths but have more negative attitude towards victims of rape. Results also reveal the significant effects of social category and gender on causal attribution for sexual violence. The results of this study are important in improving our understanding of the attitudes young adults hold towards rape and rape victims and present a need to develop strategies to dispel negative stereotypes that individuals hold about victims of rape.

For certain crimes there is a tendency in the United States to blame individuals for their victimization. Previous work has shown that affective states can impact blame attribution. Drawing upon this work, the purpose of the current pre‐registered research was to examine the relation between affective disgust and victim blame attribution. In Study 1, as participants’ (N = 203) level of implicit disgust associations with gay men increased, their tendency to blame a gay male homicide victim also increased, whereas their agreement that the homicide qualified as a hate crime decreased. In Study 2, disgust was experimentally induced by exposing participants (N = 431) to disgusting (e.g., vomit, insects) or neutral images (e.g., mug, stapler). Inducing disgust increased victim blame and decreased perceptions that the homicide constituted a hate crime. However, exploratory mediation analyses in both studies showed that the impact of disgust on hate crime applications is best explained as an indirect effect of victim blame. Taken together, these findings suggest that both individual differences in implicit gay‐disgust and situational feelings of disgust may underlie people’s perceptions of how blameworthy a victim is for the crime committed against them.

Victims of sexual violence are frequently blamed by friends, family, or legal personnel in the aftermath of an attack, with men attributing greater blame on average than women. Victims' experiences of being blamed may generate a vicious cycle in which they are more likely to be blamed in the future. Moreover, just world beliefs (JWB) have been studied extensively as an underlying cognitive mechanism that predicts greater blame. Studies examining the influence of social support on blame have yet to examine the unique role of JWB on these attributions. The current study examined blame attribution of a fictional rape victim who received either positive, negative, or neutral support from friends and family in a sample of 383 undergraduate men and women. Individually, social support and JWB were both significant predictors of blame, and women were more influenced by social support than men; specifically, gender was a more salient predictor of blame toward the positively supported victim, suggesting that positive support received by friends and family may evoke a domino effect of support from other women. Conditional effects revealed that JWB were most influential on blame when responding to the positively supported victim. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

ABSTRACTPrior studies have consistently revealed a strong positive association between general just-world beliefs and victim blaming. The present research aims to extend the literature by testing whether an act of social rejection overrides the influence of general just-world beliefs on victim blaming. Building upon the theory of moral compensation that people are more prosocial after behaving undesirably, we predicted that people should be less likely to blame an innocent victim after rejecting another person and that general just-world beliefs were not associated with victim blaming among the sources of rejection. To test these predictions, participants first completed a measure of general just-world beliefs and then recalled a past incident in which they rejected or accepted another person. They then read a scenario about school bullying and made attributions for the victim’s suffering. The results supported our predictions and the implications of the study are discussed.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is an extensive public health concern, largely affecting women aged 20 to 24 years. Research suggests that bisexual women are more likely than heterosexual and homosexual women to be victims of IPV. Bisexual women are also more likely to be blamed for their abuse experiences after disclosing, a phenomenon known as victim blame attribution (VBA). However, very little VBA research recognizes bisexuality as a separate category. Therefore, the main aim of this quasi-experimental study was to investigate the role of female victim sexuality (bisexuality, homosexuality, and heterosexuality) and observer sex in the attribution of blame to the victim and perpetrator of IPV. Participants (N = 232; aged 18-24 years, M = 21.05, SD = 1.73) were randomly assigned into one of four conditions (heterosexual victim, bisexual victim with same-sex partner, bisexual victim with different-sex partner, homosexual victim), each containing a vignette portraying IPV within a relationship. Randomization checks were performed to ensure that participants in the four conditions did not differ significantly on underlying attitudes (institutional heterosexism (IH), aversive heterosexism (AH), heterosexual privilege (HP), sexist attitudes, just world beliefs) that may have affected their responses on outcome measures. Main analyses demonstrated that bisexual victims with a same-sex partner received the highest attribution of blame, whereas perpetrators in this condition received the lowest blame attribution. Male participants attributed significantly higher blame to victims than did female participants, regardless of victim sexuality. These findings substantiate the role of victim sexuality and observer sex in IPV blame attribution patterns. This research aimed to promote equality and rightful treatment to all victims of IPV regardless of their sexuality.

Victims of multiple perpetrator rape (MPR) have been found to be an especially vulnerable group. This study examined effects of MPR and perpetrators' use of force on attributions of victim and perpetrator blame. In two large experiments (total N = 2,928), Swedish community members read scenarios depicting an MPR and subsequently made several ratings of blame, rape myth acceptance (RMA), just world beliefs, sympathy for the victim, perception of consent, and trust in the legal system. Data were analyzed with a multianalytical approach using both analyses of variance as well as exploratory analyses. In Experiment 1, more blame was attributed to a victim of MPR than a victim of a lone perpetrator rape (LPR). In Experiment 2, no effect of used force was found on levels of attributed blame. In both experiments, hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that four components, identified through principal components analyses, explained substantial shares of the variance in both victim and perpetrator blame. The best individual predictors were participants' perception of consent, sympathy for the victim, and RMA. The study shows the importance of studying participants' beliefs and attitudes about rape and that victim-blaming research needs both theory development and greater methodological awareness. Implications for victim support services are also discussed.

Victims of rape are sometimes blamed for the assaults against them. Research has examined primarily female victims; much less is known about men as victims and whether victim age affects attributions of victim blame. Furthermore, the study investigated the effects of Belief in a Just World (BJW) on blame attributions. Employing a vignette-type experimental study with a 2 (gender of participant)×2 (victim's gender)×2 (victim's age)×2 (participant BJW score) between-subjects design and several measures of blame attributions towards victim and perpetrator as dependent variables, a community sample (n = 164) participated. The main results were as hypothesised, namely that young male victims were attributed more blame, particularly by participants scoring high on BJW. Overall, victim blame level was low and perpetrator blame was high, and BJW was a powerful predictor of blame attributions.