Emotion regulation reduces victim blaming of vulnerable sex trafficking survivors.

Objective: This research applied emotion regulation to negative emotions felt toward a sex trafficking victim so that judgments were made to offer her services rather than to favor her arrest for prostitution.

Hypotheses: We predicted that participants would favor police not arresting a trafficking survivor for prostitution when she was vulnerable (Hypothesis 1) or she showed no sex work history (Hypothesis 2). We predicted a moderated mediation model (Hypothesis 3), in which emotion regulation training to reduce feelings of contempt, anger, and disgust (CAD) toward the survivor interacted with vulnerability and prior sex work such that the effects of the latter two manipulations were the strongest in the successful emotion regulation conditions (i.