engleski

Authoritarianism as a predictor of the rape victims' secondary victimization

The aim of the study was to investigate the role of authoritarianism, gender, and relevant experience in several beliefs concerning rape victims: acceptance of rape myths, presumed adequate reactions toward a rape victim, and causal attribution of women's not reporting sexual crime. Study comprised 557 undergraduate students from University of Zagreb, out of whom 273 were male (49%). Several instruments were used: Corkalo and Kamenov's Authoritarianism Scale, Rape myth acceptance scale formed from Burt's scale and Feild's Attitude Toward Rape Scale, and Scale of social reactions toward victim constructed for this research based on Ullman's SRQ. 10 items were used for measuring causal attributions for not reporting a rape, and relevant experience was assessed with a question whether a respondent knows someone who was raped. As expected, higher authoritarianism was associated with higher rape myths acceptance, as well as with treating a victim differently, while lower authoritarianism was associated with more support, both informational and emotional. Men, compared to women, strongly endorsed rape myths and preferred more negative and less positive reactions toward rape victims. In addition, interaction between gender and authoritarianism proved to be significant: higher authoritarianism had stronger impact on rape myths acceptance and lower informational and emotional support toward rape victims in men than women. Although there was no main effect of relevant experience, two and three-way interactions demonstrated that men with higher authoritarianism who know a rape victim endorsed rape myths and blamed the victim more than other groups of participants. Men showed different pattern of causal attributions for victim's not reporting a rape than women. As expected, authoritarian men less frequently recognized the reasons implicating the lack of trust in the police and justice system.

authoritarianism; rape victims; secondary victimization

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