This study investigated participant's reactions to hate crime versus nonbiased crime incident reports that included more or less detail about the crime using a 2 (victim race: African American, unstated) × 2 (amount of information: vague, detailed) between-subjects factorial design. We hypothesized that participants would be more sympathetic,…

Undergraduate volunteers (n = 134) were randomly assigned in a 2 x 2 design that manipulated type of crime (rape vs. robbery) and perpetrator motivation (anger vs. desire). After reading one of the crime scenarios, participants responded to a series of attitude items regarding responsibility for the crime, assigned blame to agents mentioned in the…

Two experiments (N = 330) examined conditions that facilitate biasing effects of rape myth acceptance (RMA) on judgments of blame in rape cases. In both experiments, participants read a short vignette depicting a rape case. In Experiment 1, the amount of case-irrelevant information about defendant and plaintiff was varied. As predicted, high-RMA…

Intimate partner violence (IPV) constitutes the majority of assaults against women in the United States, and greater than one third of female homicide victims are murdered by an intimate partner. In a small percentage of cases, battered women kill their abusers, and evidence of battering and its effects may be used to support a plea of…