The effects of victim/assailant familiarity and victim resistance on attitudes toward rape among law enforcement personnel and college students / by Judith Norris Wooten

Abstract

This study was an attempt to focus on factors which affect attitudes toward rape victims, particularly among law enforcement personnel. The influence of victim/assailant familiarity and victim resistance of the assailant on social definition of rape and victim responsibility was examined. Subjects were selected from three groups suggested by the existing literature; male law enforcement personnel (police and sheriff's officers); females in the age range most likely to be raped; and a control group of males in the same age range. A total of 383 subjects were randomly assigned to experimental conditions manipulating two levels of the factor of degree of victim/ assailant familiarity (low, high) and three levels of degree of victim resistance (low. moderate, high). Manipulation of the factors was accomplished through the presentation of written vignettes based on the relevant literature. Questionnaire responses measuring judgments of victim responsibility and definition of rape were analyzed to ascertain experimental effects. Results of the study indicated no significant effect for differing levels of victim/assailant familiarity. Significant differences were found for victim resistance on both the dependent variable of victim responsibility and the dependent measure of definition of rape, indicating that degree of resistance significantly affected judgments of victim responsibility and social definition of rape. In addition, a significant difference for group membership was found for the dependent variable of victim responsibility. Preplanned orthogonal contrasts indicated that the attributions of victim responsibility made by law enforcement officers were significantly different from the average mean of the attributions made by the combined groups of college men and college women. Similarly, significant differences were found in the attributions of victim responsibility made by college men and college women. Across all levels of the factors of victim/assailant familiarity and victim resistance college females made judgments that consistently attributed less responsibility to the victim, while law enforcement personnel tended to attribute more responsibility to the victim than did either college females or college males...