Implicit Theories and Offender Representativeness in Judgments About Sexual Crime

Abstract

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, & ...

The influence of implicit theories and offender characteristics on judgements of sexual offenders: a moderated mediation analysis

“…Our moderated mediation analysis also highlights the apparent importance of offender characteristics in reducing the influence of our core ITs on outcome judgements. Harper and Bartels (2016) argued that entity-based ITs about sexual offenders may be based on a "sexual offender schema" that comprised a stereotypical image of who such individuals are. As demonstrated above, the presentation of a non-representative case of sexual crime (ie one depicting an adult female or a juvenile perpetrator) led to the elimination of the mediating effect of ITs in exaggerating affective responses.…”

“…Second, Harper and Bartels (2016) applied this dichotomous IT framework to sexual offenders using a sample of British community members. The results replicated Blagden et al's (2016) data, in that participants expressing an incremental IT about sexual offending also expressed more positive attitudes towards sexual offenders.…”

“…Among incrementalists, there was little difference in these outcome judgements across the different case examples. Based on the results, Harper and Bartels (2016) argued that negative attitudes towards sexual offenders may be based upon entity-based ITs, with these in turn being based upon a narrow conceptualisation about who "sexual offenders" are (ie a "sexual offender schema", p. 2). This argument is consistent with the view that ITs and the representativeness heuristic play a substantial role in the expression of attitudes and judgements about sexual offenders.…”

“…On the basis of Harper and Bartels (2016) data, it can be argued that ITs and the representativeness heuristic influence the relationship between generalised attitudes towards sexual offenders and judgements of risk and sentencing. That is, they may mediate and moderate the relationship, respectively.…”

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

“…This view is based in intuitive and heuristically-based cognition that are bound up in availability and representativeness processes (Harper & Bartels, 2018;Harris & Socia, 2016), whereby highly-accessible cases of 'pedophiles' committing sexual offences are associated with particular behavioral and affective responses due to the use of the pedophile label within the mainstream media (e.g., Imhoff & Jahnke, 2018).…”