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- Title
The role of perpetrator similarity in reactions toward innocent victims.
- Authors
Bal, Michèlle; van den Bos, Kees
- Abstract
Building and extending on just world theory, this paper studies people's negative reactions to innocent victims of rape or sexual assault. Specifically, we focus on an as yet unexplored variable that may help to explain these reactions, namely whether the perpetrator of the crime was similar or dissimilar to people who observed what happened to the victim. Perpetrator similarity refers to whether the perpetrator belongs to the personal world of the observer or not, and in accordance with predictions derived from just world theory, findings of three studies reveal that especially men take more physical distance from an innocent victim (Study 1) and blame (Study 2) and derogate (Study 3) an innocent victim more when the perpetrator is similar to them as opposed to when the perpetrator is different from them. Implications are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
- Subjects
NETHERLANDS; ANALYSIS of variance; COLLEGE students; PSYCHOLOGY; QUESTIONNAIRES; RESEARCH funding; STATISTICAL sampling; SCALE analysis (Psychology); SELF-perception; SEX crimes; SEX distribution; SEX offenders; SOCIAL justice; CRIME victims; THEORY; PSYCHOSOCIAL factors
- Publication
European Journal of Social Psychology, 2010, Vol 40, Issue 6, p957
- ISSN
0046-2772
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1002/ejsp.668