The Role of Friendship on Outcomes of a Hypothetical Rape Victim
Rebecca Livgren- Washburn University
Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Jericho Hockett
Although male rape victims’ underreporting may be partly due to blame and other negative social outcomes, friendship may provide a buffer. We examined friendship’s effect on male rape victim blame, and whether just world beliefs, invulnerability feelings, and attributional style mediated this effect. Participants were randomly assigned to imagine they were best friends, an acquaintance, or a stranger with a male rape victim in a vignette. They completed self-reports representing the variables. Correlational, ANCOVA, and mediation analyses indicated victim and perpetrator blame were inversely related. Victim blame was generally low. Implications for social support of male rape victims are offered.
The Role of Friendship on Outcomes of a Hypothetical Rape Victim- Rebecca Livgren
I think this is a really important topic that does not get enough attention so thank you for taking the time to do this. Did you consider doing any exploratory analysis with participant demographics? Because of your wide age range in participants, I would be curious to know if victim-blaming and perpetrator-blaming differed between young, middle, and older age groups especially when presenting a crime that is so stigmatized. Also, did you mention the hypothetical perpetrator being of a specific gender? I have a feeling this may impact results as well.
I particularly appreciate you bringing more awareness to this topic. And as you stated in your presentation, there is a lot of stigma surrounding it!
I think it’s interesting that you collected your participants through a method involving social media. I believe this could impact the participants’ willingness to be honest with such a sensitive topic. I am curious, do you plan to expand this research to explore the limitation and advantage of your educated sample?