Attribution of Responsibility to Rapist and Victim: The Influence of Victim's Attractiveness and Rape-Related Information

This study tested the hypothesis that providing information about the prevalent motives of rape (power and anger) will influence observers' attribution of responsibility to a rape victim. Forty male introductory psychology students were randomly assigned to one of four groups: rape motivation information (informed, uninformed), and attractiveness of the target victim (attractive, unattractive). All subjects read a description of an alleged rape and responded to a questionnaire that measured the amount of responsibility attributed to the victim and to the rapist. The analysis of variance suggested that information about rape motivation decreases the amount of responsibility attributed to the victim.