We investigated effects of defendant race, victim race, and juror gender on public perceptions of a juvenile sex offense. We predicted that participants, particularly men, would support registering a juvenile defendant as a sex offender more when he was Black than White and that participants, particularly women, would support registering the defendant more when the female crime victim was portrayed as White than as Black. We also expected that support for registration would be higher when the defendant and victim were different races than when they were the same race. As expected, women (but not men) recommended registration more when the victim was White than Black. Further, participants supported registration more when the defendant and the victim were different races than when they were the same race. These effects were mediated by retributive goals to punish the offender-not by utilitarian goals to protect society. Explanations and implications are discussed.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/bsl.910 | DOI Listing |
Aggress Behav
January 2025
Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic.
Reputational peer nominations are a common method for measuring involvement in aggression-related behaviors, encompassing the roles of aggressor, victim, and defender, but may be influenced by students' affective (dis)liking relationships. This social network study investigated whether dyad- and group-level (dis)liking relationships affect perceptions of classmates' involvement in physical aggression and explored the moderating roles of classroom moral disengagement and defending norms. The study employed a longitudinal design with two time points 6 months apart, encompassing 27 classrooms and 632 early adolescents.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Interpers Violence
February 2025
Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
We sought to test the effects of sexual assault form and complainant/defendant gender on jurors' perceptions of the prototypicality of a sexual assault case, complainant, and defendant. We examined whether these perceived prototypicality measures predict mock jurors' complainant/defendant blame and credibility assessments and if these assessments predict verdict decisions in a simulated sexual assault trial. We predicted that the female complainant-male defendant condition, vaginal intercourse condition, and their combination would be perceived as more prototypical than their counterparts, which would predict blame/credibility assessments, ultimately predicting verdict.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHeliyon
December 2024
Department of Behavioral Medicine, College of Medicine & Health Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University, Al Khoudh, 123, Muscat, Oman.
Background: To stay abreast of the best international practices, the Arab Gulf countries have ratified the United Nations which includes clauses on safeguarding the well-being of children against child abuse and neglect. The enactment of laws, policies, and facilities designed to protect the rights of the child has not yet been studied to determine whether it leads to appropriate legal dispositions against perpetrators of child sexual abuse (CSA) in Oman.
Aims: This study has been launched to address two interrelated objectives; (i) describe the characteristics of CSA victims and perpetrators and (ii) examine factors associated with medicolegal findings and judicial results for CSA complainants in Oman.
Scand J Psychol
December 2024
Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
Feminist theorists have long argued that rape myths contribute to normalizing sexual assault, through belittling and denying rape victims' claims. This study examines whether descriptions of victims' behaviors are associated with sentencing in rape trials. A total of 2054 Norwegian court decisions from 2013 to 2023 in judicial records were screened.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Sch Psychol
December 2024
School of Social Work, Wayne State University, Detroit, USA; Department of Social Welfare, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea.
Numerous empirical studies have contributed to the understanding of factors connected to students' bystander behaviors in peer victimization situations. Nevertheless, a crucial gap remains concerning the scarcity of longitudinal studies. Drawing on social cognitive theory, the present study examined whether moral disengagement and defender self-efficacy predicted bystander behaviors a year later.
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