The Effect of Sex and Perpetrator-Victim Relationship on Perceptions of Domestic Homicide

Abstract

Previous research on how stereotypes affect perceptions of intimate partner violence and domestic homicide has found that violence committed by men is perceived as more severe and judged more harshly than violence committed by women. The present mock jury study investigated how perpetrator sex (male or female), crime type (familicide or filicide), and relatedness between perpetrator and child victims (biological or step) affect laypeople’s perceptions of the appropriate consequence of the crime, the reason for the offence, responsibility of the perpetrator, the likelihood of certain background factors being present, and the risk of future violence. One hundred sixty-seven university students read eight fictive descriptions of cases of multiple-victim domestic homicides, in which the sex of the perpetrator, the crime type, and the relatedness between the perpetrator and the child victims were manipulated. We found that participants recommended equally severe punishments to and placed the same amount of responsibility on male and female offenders. Female offenders were, however, regarded as mentally ill to a larger extent and perceived more likely to have been victims of domestic violence compared to male offenders. Male offenders, on the other hand, were seen as more likely to have committed domestic violence in the past, having been unemployed, have substance abuse, hold aggressive attitudes, and commit violent acts in the future. Participants also perceived offenders killing biological children as more mentally ill than offenders killing stepchildren. The present study extends the literature on the possible effect of stereotypes on decision making in psychiatric and judicial contexts.

Familicide: A Systematic Literature Review

“…This finding is in line with research indicating that parents do not invest in stepchildren to the same degree as in biological children (Antfolk, Karlsson, Söderlund, & Szala, 2017; Henretta, Van Voorhis, & Soldo, 2014; Kalil, Ryan, & Chor, 2014) and that children have a higher risk of becoming physically and sexually abused by a stepparent than by a biological parent (Archer, 2013; Daly & Wilson, 1985, 1996; Hilton, Harris, & Rice, 2015; Sariola & Uutela, 1996). This “Cinderella effect” can be partially explained by parents being emotionally more close to biological children, and by evolutionary assumptions, stipulating that natural selection has promoted parental investment in biological children, as these, in contrast to stepchildren, share the parent’s genetic material (Antfolk et al, 2017; Karlsson, Malén, Kaakinen, & Antfolk, 2018; Trivers, 1972).…”

The Perpetrator-Victim Relationship: An Important Clue in Understanding Intimate Partner Homicide in China

“…Although the IPH rates show a downward trend, those concerning the impact of different perpetrator-victim relationship statuses differ (Wells & DeLeon-Granados, 2004). Among married partners, there was a greater increase in the victimization rates of female victims than males (Karlsson et al, 2018; Spencer & Stith, 2020). Similarly, the rates increased for unmarried female victims, and spousal homicide decreased over time (Suonpää & Savolainen, 2019).…”