The Role of Alcohol in the Construction of a ‘Good’ Victim — The Attribution of Blame to Male Victims of Violence

Abstract

This paper examines the attribution of blame in two hypothetical male-to-male violence scenarios. There are two main aims for the study: to study the effect of the victim's intoxication on the blame attributed to him; and more generally to study factors that determine how much blame a respondent attributes to the victim. 1,004 RDD quantitative telephone surveys were completed with Swedes aged 16-25. The response rate was 73.8%. Respondents were presented with vignettes, two of them describing male-to-male aggression. A number of variables were manipulated in the vignettes, for example the victim's drinking. The attribution of blame to the victim was analysed using multiple regression and ANOVA. The first analyses were stratified by sex. For male respondents, the victim's intoxication had no effect on the blame attributed to him. Female respondents attributed more blame to a drunken victim in a provoked male to male assault but not in the unprovoked scenario. When it came to understanding factors that determined the general attribution of blame, we found surprisingly few significant variables.