Attitudes towards sexual offenders: What do we know, and why are they important?

Abstract

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.

Excusing and Justifying Rape Cognitions in Judgments of Sexually Coercive Dating Scenarios

“…More specific to the present study, the explicit agreement with statements such as “A lot of times, when women say ‘no,’ they are just playing hard to get and really mean ‘yes’” or “I believe that any woman can prevent herself from being raped if she really wants to” (items loading onto the justifying rape factor of the RAPE scale; Hermann et al, 2012) is unlikely to be widespread within the general population as a result of societal negativity toward sexual offenders (for a review, see Harper, Hogue, & Bartels, 2017). As observed by Richards and McCartan (2018), people are generally hesitant to explicitly endorse propositions that may condone or justify the behaviors of sexually coercive individuals.…”

Humanizing pedophilia as stigma reduction: A large-scale intervention study

“…Previous studies have demonstrated how narrative humanization can improve the views of students (Harper et al, 2018) and clinical professionals (Jahnke, Philipp, & Hoyer, 2015) by reversing the processes of dehumanization described previously (Harper & Hogue, 2015Viki et al, 2012). However, these participant groups may be naturally more receptive to progressive information about people with pedophilic sexual interests and the improvement of their treatment within society (possibly due to higher levels of openness, liberalism, professional experience, or general education; Harper, Hogue, & Bartels, 2017).…”

Using Video Stimuli to Examine Judgments of Nonoffending and Offending Pedophiles: A Brief Communication

“…Finally, given that people tend to hold negative and general stigmatizing attitudes towards NOPs (Imhoff, 2015) and sexual offenders (Harper, Hogue, & Bartels, 2017), we investigated whether these attitudes were greater following the offending clip, compared to the NOP and control clips (Hypothesis 3 and 4).…”