In the current context of the global pandemic of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19), health professionals are working with social scientists to inform government policy on how to slow the spread of the virus. An increasing amount of social scientific research has looked at the role of public message framing, for instance, but few studies have thus far examined the role of individual differences in emotional and personality-based variables in predicting virus-mitigating behaviors. In this study, we recruited a large international community sample (N = 324) to complete measures of self-perceived risk of contracting COVID-19, fear of the virus, moral foundations, political orientation, and behavior change in response to the pandemic. Consistently, the only predictor of positive behavior change (e.g., social distancing, improved hand hygiene) was fear of COVID-19, with no effect of politically relevant variables. We discuss these data in relation to the potentially functional nature of fear in global health crises.

The Community Attitudes Toward Sex Offenders (CATSO) scale is an 18-item self-report questionnaire designed to measure respondents’ attitudes toward sex offenders. Its original factor structure has been questioned by a number of previous studies, and so this paper sought to reimagine the scale as an outcome measure, as opposed to a scale of attitudes. A face validity analysis produced a provisional three-factor structure underlying the CATSO: ‘punitiveness,’ ‘stereotype endorsement,’ and ‘risk perception.’ A sample of 400 British members of the public completed a modified version of the CATSO, the Attitudes Toward Sex Offenders scale, the General Punitiveness Scale, and the Rational-Experiential Inventory. A three-factor structure of a 22-item modified CATSO was supported using half of the sample, with factors being labeled ‘sentencing and management,’ ‘stereotype endorsement,’ and ‘risk perception.’ Confirmatory factor analysis on data from the other half of the sample endorsed the three-factor structure; however, two items were removed in order to improve ratings of model fit. This new 20-item ‘Perceptions of Sex Offenders scale’ has practical utility beyond the measurement of attitudes, and suggestions for its future use are provided

Stigmatization and societal punitiveness about pedophilia have a range of potential consequences, such as the social isolation of people with sexual interest in children, and the formation of policies that are not consistent with empirical research findings. Previous research has shown that people with pedophilic sexual interests use societal thinking to self-stigmatize, which in turn may actually serve to increase their risk of committing a sexual offense. In this study, we compared two attitudinal interventions (first-person narrative vs. expert opinion) using a student sample (N = 100). It was hypothesized that both interventions would lead to reductions in stigmatization and punitive attitudes about pedophiles on an explicit (self-report) level but that only the narrative intervention would lead to reductions of these constructs at the implicit level. Our findings supported both hypotheses. We further discuss the role of narrative humanization in this area and offer suggestions for further research based upon the theoretical and methodological implications of the findings.

In this article, we sought to build on existing stigmatization research by examining the extent to which internalized stigmatization (i.e., the personal adoption and incorporation of social views, operationalized as thought suppression-an avoidant coping strategy-and low psychological well-being) among minor-attracted persons (MAPs) may impact upon help-seeking behaviors and their avoidance of children. We adopted a cross-sectional anonymous survey design to recruit a sample of selfidentified MAPs (N = 183) from prominent online support fora. We found that increased levels of suppression and lower levels of psychological well-being were associated with lower levels of hope about the future, but higher levels of both shame and guilt about having a sexual interest in minors. Thought suppression was not significantly associated with outcomes related to help-seeking behaviors, but did significantly predict higher rates of actively avoiding children, even after controlling for psychological well-being and other emotional variables. Independently, lower levels of self-reported psychological wellbeing were associated with a desire for more support and higher rates of actively avoiding children. We explore the potential implications of our data in relation to treating and supporting MAPs within the community, increasing their well-being, and encouraging help-seeking behavior.

Over the past two decades, a large body of research on attitudes towards sexual offenders has been conducted across a number of different contexts. However, there has been less discussion of their implications. Clinically, attitudes may be related to therapeutic climates and treatment outcomes and risk judgments, while in the social context, the views of the public about sexual offenders may play a key role in the reintegration of these offenders, and the political responses associated with sexual offending. Sexual crime is advocated as a public health issue, with attitudes towards the perpetrators of such offenses being of critical importance when trying to create a social environment within which to successfully reduce rates of sexual offending. In this article, the research evidence currently available in this area is reviewed. An analysis of the conceptualization and measurement of attitudes towards sexual offenders is provided, before the existing literature on the factors underlying such attitudes is explored. Following this, the malleability of attitudes towards sexual offenders is examined. The review concludes with some suggestions for future theoretical, empirical, and practical advancements in this important area.

Much research has examined the views held by citizens about sexual offenders and related policy responses. Although studies have extensively examined demographic correlates of such views, little attention has been paid to psychological mechanisms that underpin them. Gaining a deeper understanding of such mechanisms may ultimately prove useful for informing communication strategies around the problem of sexual violence. We propose the application of moral foundations theory as a means of exploring the roots of the current punitive consensus around sexual crime policy at the macro level, as well as individual variability in attitudes about sexual violence. Following an overview of the sexual offender policy landscape, and a description of MFT principles, we outline how this framework can help to explain both convergence and divergence in responses to sexual offending among members of the public. We also provide a series of testable hypotheses to stimulate further research in this area

The relationships between the media, public attitudes and crime are complex, with evidence suggesting that public interaction with these press reports influencing wider social and political attitudes. Here, 543 articles from eight of the ten most-read British national newspapers were examined in terms of their representativeness of crime rates, and their linguistic properties. Results include a 9:1 representation of sexual crime, a 2.5:1 representation of violent crime, and a 1:4 representation of acquisitive crime within press articles compared to official statistics. Rating the linguistic content indicates that sexual crime articles comprised angrier and more emotionally negative tones than stories on all other groups. Tabloid and broadsheet differences were found in headlines, but not in the main bodies of the articles. Cognitive-experiential self-theory is offered as just one social psychological framework for understanding the role of emotion in sexual crime reporting.

Implicit theories structure the way people understand and respond to various human actions.Typically, people believe attributes are either fixed (entitists) or malleable (incrementalists).The present study aimed to examine: (a) whether attitudes towards sexual offenders differ depending upon one's implicit theory about human nature and sexual offenders, and (b) whether implicit theories are associated with judgments made about different types of child abuser. A sample of 252 community participants was recruited. Their attitudes, implicit theories, and political orientation were assessed via self-report. One of three vignettes describing an incidence of child sexual abuse was then presented. The cases were identical except the perpetrator was either an adult male, an adult female, or a male juvenile. Participants then made judgments about the offender's deserved sentence and moral character. Entitists (across both domains) held more negative attitudes than incrementalists, although the magnitude of the difference was greatest when examining implicit theories about sexual offenders. Compared to those with an incremental theory of sexual offenders, entity theorists judged sexual offending to be more: (a) indicative of the perpetrator's moral character, and (b) deserving of punishment. However, scores were greater towards the adult male relative to the adult female and juvenile. The findings suggest that implicit theories about sexual offenders are domain-specific. They also indicate that judgments made by those with an entity theory (about sexual offenders) are affected by whether a case is representative of a stereotypical sexual offender. Implications of the findings are discussed, along with limitations and future research.Keywords: implicit theories; representativeness heuristic; sexual offenders; public attitudes; schema 3 Implicit theories and offender representativeness in judgments about sexual crimeMuch research has demonstrated that people generally hold more negative attitudes towards sexual offenders than perpetrators of other crime types (e.g., Rogers & Ferguson, 2011;Willis, Levenson, & Ward, 2010). Given the nature and damaging consequences of sexual crime, it is not surprising that people within society hold such attitudes. Sexual offenders and the type of offenses they commit elicit negative affective reactions, such as fear, disgust, and moral outrage (Kernsmith, Craun, & Foster, 2009;Vess, 2009;Willis et al., 2010), which can provide the basis for one's negative attitude towards sexual offenders; a phenomenon known as 'affect-as-information' (Clore, Gasper, & Garvin, 2001).People have a striking ability to effortlessly form attitudes on the basis of "media exposure, and other forms of socially-supplied information" (Crano, Cooper, & Forgas, 2010, p.3). Therefore, media coverage about sexual offenders is likely to play a major role in shaping the public's attitude towards sexual offenders (Craun & Theriot, 2009;Galeste, Fradella, & Vogel, 2012;Harper & Hogue, 2015a;Malinen, Willis, & ...