The Impact of Victim and Perpetrator Race on Likelihood of Bystander Advice Post-sexual Assault: A Vignette Study

Sexual assault is a highly prevalent issue, with some individuals being more vulnerable to being sexually assaulted. Namely, women are at a higher risk than men, and within women, ethnic minorities are at a particularly high risk. Both victim and perpetrator race were previously found to impact not only the victims’ reporting behaviour but also case proceedings and bystanders’ reactions, with inter-racial sexual assault being perceived as more severe. The current study assessed whether manipulating both victim and perpetrator race (being White, Arab or Black) would affect bystanders’ advice to a hypothetical victim about post-sexual assault reactions. We included 255 participants with no history of sexual assault and presented them with one out of nine vignettes. The vignettes included either a White, Black or Arab perpetrator and a White, Black or Arab victim (9 conditions, 26 < ns > 31), and were administered in a randomized order. Participants were asked to imagine witnessing the described situation and to rate the likelihood of recommending eight different post-sexual assault reactions (tell friends, tell family, confront the person, report, police report, do nothing, try to forget and deny) to a victim. Overall, reporting the incident and confronting the perpetrator were the most likely advice bystanders would provide to the victim, with no significant differences between race conditions. These results indicate that bystanders would suggest an active approach against victimization regardless of the race of the involved parties. However, it is important to consider that race-related research evokes socially desirable responding, which could have impacted our findings.