Hindsight bias in perceptions of sexual assault

Abstract

This investigation explored hindsight bias in college students’ perceptions of sexual assault. Participants read a vignette about a man and woman who met at a party with the conditions varied across the vignettes: the alcohol use of the characters, the outcome of the vignette, and in the rape outcome, the victim’s actions after the assault. Hindsight bias was assessed using both the posttest-only method and the pretest/posttest method and for both the outcome of the vignette and post-outcome events. Results revealed significant evidence for the existence of hindsight bias with the pretest/posttest method. Additionally, results revealed some evidence for hindsight bias contamination in perceptions of vignette characters, but in ways contrary to those predicted by the Defensive Attribution Hypothesis (Shaver, 1970).