Emotional victims and the impact on credibility: A systematic review

Doorn, Janne van; Koster, Nathalie N.

doi:10.1016/j.avb.2019.03.007

Cited by 16 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Moreover, perceived harm can shape judgments of credibility—victims who are perceived as more distressed are also perceived as more credible (Klippenstine & Schuller, 2012; Nitschke et al, 2019; Schuller et al, 2010). Perceived harm further plays an important role in punitive and legal judgments, such as shaping the level of punishment assigned to the perpetrator, as well as other judgments like the amount of compensation awarded to victims (EEOC, 2017; Vallano, 2013; van Doorn & Koster, 2019). In the present work, we investigate whether perceptions of sexual harassment—linking potentially harassing behavior to gender-based group membership and perceiving harassment as credible and harmful—are influenced by the prototypicality of targets of sexual harassment.…”

Section: Perceptions Of Sexual Harassmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to informing whether the behavior violates Title VII, perceptions of psychological harm is oftentimes central to how people evaluate perpetrators and consider liability and damage determinations for the victim (Vallano, 2013; van Doorn & Koster, 2019). Indeed, we found some evidence that people may assign less severe punishments to perpetrators against nonprototypical victims, though more research is needed to better understand why we found this effect in Study C1 but not Study C2.…”

Section: Study Series C: Prototypes and The Impact Of Sexual Harassmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Narrow prototypes and neglected victims: Understanding perceptions of sexual harassment.

Goh¹,

Bandt-Law²,

Cheek³

et al. 2022

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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Sexual harassment is pervasive and has adverse effects on its victims, yet perceiving sexual harassment is wrought with ambiguity, making harassment difficult to identify and understand. Eleven preregistered, multimethod experiments (total N = 4,065 participants) investigated the nature of perceiving sexual harassment by testing whether perceptions of sexual harassment and its impact are facilitated when harassing behaviors target those who fit with the prototype of women (e.g., those who have feminine features, interests, and characteristics) relative to those who fit less well with this prototype. Studies A1–A5 demonstrate that participants’ mental representation of sexual harassment targets overlapped with the prototypes of women as assessed through participant-generated drawings, face selection tasks, reverse correlation, and self-report measures. In Studies B1–B4, participants were less likely to label incidents as sexual harassment when they targeted nonprototypical women compared with prototypical women. In Studies C1 and C2, participants perceived sexual harassment claims to be less credible and the harassment itself to be less psychologically harmful when the victims were nonprototypical women rather than prototypical women. This research offers theoretical and methodological advances to the study of sexual harassment through social cognition and prototypicality perspectives, and it has implications for harassment reporting and litigation as well as the realization of fundamental civil rights. For materials, data, and preregistrations of all studies, see https://osf.io/xehu9/.

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Section: Perceptions Of Sexual Harassmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Study Series C: Prototypes and The Impact Of Sexual Harassmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrow prototypes and neglected victims: Understanding perceptions of sexual harassment.

Goh¹,

Bandt-Law²,

Cheek³

et al. 2022

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…There is robust evidence for the emotional victim effect (EVE) (Ask & Landstrom 2010, Nitschke et al 2019, van Doorn & Koster 2019: Victims gain credibility by expressing negative emotion relative to expressing no emotion or positive emotion (e.g., happiness)-an effect demonstrated among both laypeople and criminal justice professionals (Nitschke et al 2019), for both physical and sexual assault victims (van Doorn & Koster 2019), and for both adult and child victims (van Doorn & Koster 2019). This bolstered credibility of an emotional witness leads to more guilty verdicts (Dahl et al 2007, Golding et al 2003, Kaufmann et al 2003) and harsher sentencing recommendations (Nadler & Rose 2003, Tsoudis & Smith-Lovin 1998.…”

Section: Victimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Experienced and Expressed Emotion on Legal Factfinding

Salerno

2021

Annu. Rev. Law. Soc. Sci.

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Judges and jurors are asked to comb through horrific evidence of accidents and crimes when choosing verdicts and punishment. These factfinders are likely to experience and express intense emotions as a result. A review of social, cognitive, moral, and legal psychological science illuminates how experienced and expressed emotions in legal settings can unconsciously bias even the most well-intentioned, diligent factfinder's decision-making processes in prejudicial ways. Experiencing negative emotions creates motivation to blame and punish—instigating blame validation processes to justify guilty/liability verdicts and harsher punishments. The review also examines how emotion expression can impugn legal actors’ credibility when it violates factfinders’ (often unrealistic) expectations for appropriate emotion in legal contexts. It considers misguided and promising interventions to help factfinders regulate emotional responses, advocating limiting emotional evidence as much as possible and, when not possible, helping factfinders reframe how they think about it and remain aware of their potential biases. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 17 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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“…w?>Indeed, the questionable link between the (actual or perceived) emotional demeanour of a victim-witness and others’ assessments of her credibility within sexual offences trials has been well-documented. There have been two meta-analyses of mock juror studies in this area – one of rape (Nitschke et al, 2019) and one that included rape and other sexual offences (van Doorn and Koster, 2019). Both studies found that complainers 14 who were emotionally distressed when giving evidence were significantly more likely to be regarded as credible than those who were emotionally controlled, although the relationship between emotion and credibility was a complex one and complainers who seemed angry or ‘too emotional’ were also judged as less credible (Nitschke et al, 2019: 956; van Doorn and Koster, 2019: 84).…”

Section: What Do We Know From Existing Psychological Research?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There have been two meta-analyses of mock juror studies in this area – one of rape (Nitschke et al, 2019) and one that included rape and other sexual offences (van Doorn and Koster, 2019). Both studies found that complainers 14 who were emotionally distressed when giving evidence were significantly more likely to be regarded as credible than those who were emotionally controlled, although the relationship between emotion and credibility was a complex one and complainers who seemed angry or ‘too emotional’ were also judged as less credible (Nitschke et al, 2019: 956; van Doorn and Koster, 2019: 84). 15 This is supported by a qualitative study of mock jury deliberations, where members of the public – having watched a live performance of a fictional rape mini-trial – were asked to deliberate.…”

Section: What Do We Know From Existing Psychological Research?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Handle with care: Jury deliberation and demeanour-based assessments of witness credibility

Chalmers

Leverick

Munro

2022

The International Journal of Evidence & Proof

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It is unclear how effectively jurors perform their task of assessing witness credibility. Drawing on evidence from a mock jury study involving 863 mock jurors deliberating across 64 juries, and building on existing research, this paper explores juries’ reliance on demeanour. While jurors make use of factors which the research literature suggests are often appropriate credibility markers, for example external consistency of accounts, there is cause for concern over the nuance with which jurors apply those assessments in high stakes contexts. The manner in which jurors look to manner of delivery as evidence of credibility is also problematic. The paper makes the case for a more circumspect approach towards jurors’ use of demeanour assessments. At a minimum, this requires that judicial directions no longer advocate their reliability, but remind jurors of the complexities associated with such assessments and the need to treat any conclusions grounded on presentational cues with caution.

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Emotional victims and the impact on credibility: A systematic review

Cited by 16 publications

References 56 publications

Narrow prototypes and neglected victims: Understanding perceptions of sexual harassment.

Narrow prototypes and neglected victims: Understanding perceptions of sexual harassment.

The Impact of Experienced and Expressed Emotion on Legal Factfinding

Handle with care: Jury deliberation and demeanour-based assessments of witness credibility

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