Cycle of Blame or Just World: Effects of Legal Verdicts on Gender Patterns in Rape-Myth Acceptance and Victim Empathy

The conviction rate for sexual assault is persistently low in the United States. We propose a cycle-of-blame framework to highlight the possibility that the same rape myths that limit convictions are in turn strengthened by not-guilty verdicts. Participants read a summary of a rape trial. In different conditions, they were told that the jury's verdict was guilty or not guilty. In a No-Verdict condition, participants merely read the summary. All 96 participants subsequently responded to questionnaires measuring rape-myth acceptance and victim empathy. Gender affected both the myth and empathy measures, with women accepting fewer myths than men and exhibiting more empathy for the victim. Gender and Condition interacted such that men showed greater acceptance of rape myths and less empathy after a not-guilty versus a guilty verdict. Women evidenced consistently high empathy across conditions and greater myth acceptance after a guilty verdict. Although the cycle-of-blame principle is consistent with the performance of men, women's data require a different interpretation, which we base on just-world theory.