The Pronouns of Sexual Assault: Results from a Factorial Vignette Experiment Examining the Role of Gender on Public Perceptions of Perpetrators

ABSTRACT

This study tests the effects of gender on perceptions of sexual assault in four ways: 1- perpetrator gender, 2- victim gender, 3- the dyadic interaction of perpetrator and victim gender, and 4- gender of the survey respondent. Specifically, we administered a factorial vignette survey to a state-based sample (N = 1,000). Each respondent rated two sexual assault vignettes by a coach, one involving a child and the other an adult. Experimental conditions were randomly assigned to each vignette, specifically perpetrator gender and victim gender. Survey respondent rated the perpetrator in each vignette on three dependent variables: 1- social distancing, 2- severity of punishment, and 3- recidivism risk. Mancova and random intercepts multilevel models were calculated to analyze the individual and interactive effects of gender on the dependent variables. Results indicate that participants were harsher toward male perpetrators, and to a lesser extent, toward perpetrators who abused female victims. Moreover, male survey respondents were also more lenient than females when attributing blame. Overall, the variances explained by survey respondent characteristics was high. This study demonstrates the intricacies to current understandings of gender and their impact on appraisals sexually coercive scenarios, but also the strength of preconceived stereotypes about sexual offenders.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual assault
• rape
• sex offenders
• victims
• women as offenders

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We did not calculate the weighted analysis. The validity of our approach should be investigated in the future, as effect heterogeneity may be important to consider (Thompson & Pickett, 2020).