Purpose. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of rape myth acceptance, belief in a just world, and sexual attitudes on attributions of responsibility in a date rape scenario. We predicted that people higher in rape myth acceptance and those who more strongly believed in a just world, as well as those who held more conservative sexual attitudes, would attribute greater blame to the accuser than to the accused. Methods. One hundred seventy‐two undergraduates from a medium‐sized, Catholic university in the USA read a hypothetical date rape scenario and completed the Rape Myth Acceptance Scale, the Just World Scale, the Sexual Attitudes Scale, and a Judgment Questionnaire constructed for the current study. Results. Rape myth acceptance mediated the relationship between gender and judgments of responsibility for the accused and the accuser. Men were more likely to endorse rape myths and, consequently, assign less responsibility to the accused and more responsibility to the accuser than women. Conclusions. Pre‐existing beliefs regarding the nature of rape and the circumstances surrounding it may bias attributions of responsibility in date rape cases. There may be utility in addressing whether jurors hold such beliefs prior to the start of a trial.

Purpose. Line-up administrators' expectations have been shown to influence eyewitnesses' identification decisions. Expectations may also influence administrators' willingness to record witnesses' decisions as positive identifications. Methods.Single-and double-blind participant administrators presented a line-up to a confederate witness, who identified either the suspect or a filler. Results.A hierarchical log-linear analysis revealed an interaction effect of blindness and witness choice on participants' recording of the identification: Single-blind administrators were more likely to record the confederate's choice as a positive identification when the witness chose the suspect (vs. a filler), whereas double-blind administrators' records were not influenced by the witness's choice. An interaction between blindness and witness choice also emerged for participant administrators' witness evaluations. Singleblind administrators rated confederates who chose a filler as significantly less credible than those who chose a suspect; double-blind administrators' ratings were consistent across photo selection. Conclusions. Blindness influenced line-up administrators' record of line-up outcomes.These results add to the growing body of research supporting the use of double-blind line-up administration.

Some evidence suggests that expertise and observational skills training can reduce attentional errors, such as change blindness. Laypeople typically assume that law enforcement officers possess acute observational skills, but no research to date has compared law enforcement and lay samples on their susceptibility to change blindness. In the present study, student and law enforcement samples completed a change blindness task and attempted to identify the target(s) from four line-ups. Law enforcement officers and students were equally susceptible to change blindness regarding the switch in the target's identity, but students were more likely than officers to detect changes in the target's clothing. Students also performed better on the line-up task, overall, than officers. Additionally, whereas students' confidence was positively correlated with identification accuracy under some circumstances, officers' confidence was either uncorrelated or negatively correlated with accuracy. We discuss the implications of these findings and suggest some factors accounting for law enforcement officers' relatively poor performance on these tasks.

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