Haunting details: A mixed‐methods study on predictors of details recalled from a victim narrative

Abstract

Narratives are used to make sense of traumatic experiences. However, little attention has been paid to the way one processes another's traumatic personal narrative that is often disorganized and contains emotional language. I examine the orientations a sample of 734 participants took when encountering a protection order court narrative. Participants who took a substantive orientation approached the narrative through the lens of human experience and recalled physical violence, threats, injuries, and emotions experienced by the victim. However, some participants had an analytic orientation, focusing on the clarity of the narrative or the victim's marital status. The extent to which participants cognitively took the victim's perspective shaped whether they adopted a substantive or analytic orientation. Those who cognitively placed themselves in the perspective of the victim were more likely to recall the violence the victim faced and were more likely to find the scenario concerning.