The Effect of Victim Information on Causality Judgments in a Rape Trial Scenario

摘要

D. M. Rempala and F. B. Bernieri (2005) showed that in a date-rape trialscenario, increasing the amount of neutral, nondiagnostic information (i.e., informationunrelated to the case) about the rape victim decreases the percentage of guilt verdicts. Theauthors attempted to determine the causal mechanism for this phenomenon. Participantsread 1 of 4 rape trial scenarios (which differed only in the amount of non diagnosticinformation about the defendant and victim), then provided a verdict and rated the targetson several dimensions. The authors replicated pattern of guilt verdicts in the Rempala andBernieri study (p < .05), and a path analysis indicated that increased victim informationaltered causality judgments, which then affected guilt verdicts.