Determinants of Punitive Attitudes Toward People with Pedophilia: Dissecting Effects of the Label and Intentionality Ascriptions.

Abstract

Recent research has established marked punitive attitudes against people sexually interested in children. These negative attitudes are even more pronounced when such sexual interest is labeled as pedophilia, but are attenuated to the extent that such sexual interest is perceived as beyond one's own control (unintentional). We explored these effects in more detail by separately manipulating the label (pedophiles vs. people with sexual interest in prepubescent children) and degree of intentionality (pedophilia or sexual desire as malleable vs. not malleable). Participants recruited via an online platform (N=423) were randomly assigned to the experimental conditions and asked to rate degree of intentionality, dangerousness, deviance, and punitive attitudes toward people sexually interested in children. As expected, participants expressed stronger punitive attitudes when the label was present. The manipulation of intentionality, however, was not successful. Further analyses explored whether participants found the notion that sexual interest cannot be altered at will more credible than the opposite, particularly in presence of the pedophilia label. The results are discussed with regard to the significance of and potential intervention against the markedly strong public stigma against people with pedophilia.