Strongly identified White Europeans’ humanization of the complainant predicts elevated punishment for a Black but not White university student accused of sexual assault.

Abstract

Objective: Some scholars suggest that right-leaning Europeans utilize sympathetic reactions toward women gender-based violence victims to justify discrimination against Black men. Thus, in the context of an alleged sexual assault at a university, we examined whether the relationship between White Europeans' support for punishing an accused Black man would be moderated by their racial identity and the extent that they humanized the woman complainant. We further examined the role of pejorative beliefs about the man. Method: White Europeans (n = 302) recruited through Prolific completed a racial identity measure and read about an alleged male-to-female sexual assault by a Black or White male university student and reported the extent they humanized the woman complainant. They then completed measures assessing their perpetratordirected sexualized threat attributions (i.e., he was hypersexual, threatening) and endorsement of: (a) university (i.e., suspension) and (b) criminal (i.e., incarceration) punitive sanctions. Results: In the Black male target condition, among those who reported strong (but not weak) racial identification, stronger complainant humanization predicted greater endorsement for both forms of punitive reactions. The humanization-punitive reactions association was mediated by greater sexualized threat attributions. In the White male target condition, the interaction between racial identity and complainant humanization was not significant. Conclusions: Among strongly identified White Europeans, elevated humanization of a sexual assault complainant predicted greater punitive reactions toward an accused university Black man. However, this positive humanization-punitive responding relationship was not based on stable moral standards as it did not occur for a similarly accused university White man.