“Slut-shaming” is not the only reason people blame rape victims

There is a widespread tendency in society to “blame the victim” – trivializing injustice by suggesting that the victim somehow deserves the injustice. But psychological research has shown that people often perceive victims the other way around: as particularly morally virtuous because they have been through so much.

In a 2021 study led by one of us (Dr. Jordan), researchers asked participants to imagine a woman whose boyfriend had stolen her iPad. People tended to view the woman as more moral and trustworthy than an identical woman who had not been the victim of injustice. Notably, they did not give the woman the same moral character boost when her iPad was destroyed in an earthquake. Just being the victim of an injustice gave her a moral sheen.

This “moral halo” effect has been observed in victims of all kinds of wrongdoing: theft, verbal abuse, medical malpractice. While it may seem irrational (isn't it your own behavior that determines how moral you are?), the moral halo effect likely serves an important social function, making communities more willing to rally around victims and punish their wrongdoers.

However, there are certain situations where the blame is more likely to be placed on the victim. The classic case is perhaps a rape that is preceded by consensual sexual acts such as kissing or foreplay between the victim and the perpetrator. In this case, the victim – even if she ultimately and clearly refuses consent – is often seen as an accomplice to the assault.

One obvious explanation seems to be “slut-shaming”: if the victim is harshly judged for her consensual sexual activities, she may be viewed as less moral and therefore less deserving of support.

But in a study published last month, we found that slut-shaming is not necessarily the main reason why people are less sympathetic to victims of such assaults. This finding has important implications for how society should educate people about rape.

In a series of studies with more than 12,000 participants, we presented people with the following description of a sexual assault:

Alice, a college student, is at a fraternity party. She flirts with an acquaintance, Michael, who lives in the fraternity. He invites her to his room and they start dating. But when Alice says she wants to stop, Michael ignores her verbal and physical protests and forcibly forces her to have sex.

Our participants acknowledged that Alice had been raped, but she did not receive the same moral boost that other victims typically receive. In contrast, when we described a sexual assault that was physically identical to Alice's but occurred out of the blue—without prior consensual action—the moral halo effect returned with a vengeance: our participants perceived Alice as more virtuous than someone like them who had not been raped.

So why wasn’t this a simple case of slut-shaming? Based on what we found when we looked at how participants judged Alice’s voluntary sexual activity when she not When no sexual assault occurred, we found, perhaps not surprisingly, that politically conservative and older adults judged Alice negatively for her casual flirtation, whereas politically liberal and younger respondents had no moral objections to her one-night stand.

What is striking, however, is that all of these groups – liberals, conservatives, young adults, older adults, and both men and women – were less sympathetic to Alice when she was voluntarily with Michael before her rape.

This finding suggests that victim blaming in these cases is not necessarily about disapproval of risky, unhealthy, or “sloppy” behavior (although it may be about that, too). It seems that people have a psychological tendency, after giving consent in one situation, to view that consent as “transferable” to a subsequent situation—even when they explicitly admit that it is not.

This psychological bias may lead certain victims to experience less community support and solidarity, which in turn may make those victims less likely to report assaults. Our analysis of a 2019 survey of more than 180,000 students at 33 colleges and universities across the United States confirms this concern: We found evidence that victims of sexual assault are less likely to report incidents that began consensually.

There is an important lesson to be learned from our results. Although society has made significant progress in recognizing the value of sexual autonomy, the challenge is greater than we thought. It is true that “no means no,” regardless of what came before. Society must continue to teach this lesson. But unfortunately, our research suggests that this message is harder to internalize than one might think, even for those ideologically inclined to want to internalize it.

By communicating the subtle but powerful ways our brains process issues of consent, we can hopefully begin to break down the barriers that prevent us from fully supporting all victims of sexual assault.