Emotion Regulation Reduces Victim Blaming of Vulnerable Sex Trafficking Survivors

Objective: This research applied emotion regulation to negative emotions felt toward a sex trafficking victim so that judgments were made to offer her services rather than to favor her arrest for prostitution. Hypotheses: We predicted that participants would favor police not arresting a trafficking survivor for prostitution when she was vulnerable (Hypothesis 1) or she showed no sex work history (Hypothesis 2). We predicted a moderated mediation model (Hypothesis 3), in which emotion regulation training to reduce feelings of contempt, anger, and disgust (CAD) toward the survivor interacted with vulnerability and prior sex work such that the effects of the latter two manipulations were the strongest in the successful emotion regulation conditions (i.e., cognitive reappraisal and cognitive reappraisal with motivation), with CAD emotions mediating those relationships. Method: Participants (N = 421, 54% women, Mage = 42.63 years, 75% White) read a modified version of a sex trafficking case and decided whether the police should arrest the survivor for prostitution. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of 16 conditions in a 4 (emotion regulation: control vs. cognitive reappraisal vs. motivation vs. cognitive reappraisal plus motivation) × 2 (vulnerability: vulnerable background vs. nonvulnerable background) × 2 (prior prostitution history: engaged in prostitution before the trafficking incident vs. not engaged in prostitution before the incident) factorial design. Results: Participants with cognitive reappraisal training, but not controls, who read about a vulnerable survivor were less likely to favor arrest. Moreover, those who trained with cognitive reappraisal plus motivation to decrease their CAD emotions, compared with the controls, showed weaker CAD feelings toward the vulnerable survivor, which in turn predicted a lower probability of favoring arrest. Conclusions: Reducing CAD emotions through emotion regulation supported the impact of emotions on culpability judgments and showed how emotion regulation can be used to support a victim-centered approach to fighting sex trafficking. Public Significance Statement Emotion regulation lowers feelings of contempt, anger, and disgust toward sex trafficking survivors and leads to a reduction in inclinations to arrest survivors for prostitution. Providing that training for police, social workers, and judges could further a victim-centered approach so that survivors can become law enforcement allies in the p