Social and Emotional Determinants of Victim Crime Reporting

This study investigated the effect of victims' level of anger and type of bystander advice on theft victims' decision to call the police. Subjects were led to believe that they were victims of an 11 theft which occurred on the premises of an industrial research organization. Two independent variables were manipulated in a 3 x 3 factorial design: (a) bystander advice (advised action, advised no action, no advice) and (b) victim anger (high anger, low anger, no anger). Since a manipulation check revealed that victim anger was not successfully manipulated, victims' level of self-reported anger was used in the analyses. Two main effects were found. In comparison with the no-advice condition, the advice to take no action decreased subjects' willingness to report the incident whereas the advice to take action did not significantly increase reporting. Victims' level of self-reported anger was positively related to their willingness to report the theft. Separate analyses by sex showed that anger affected reporting by females but not by males. It was suggested that victim reporting may be governed more by a hot decision process than by a cold process involving r ational calculation of costs and benefits.