Abstract
This study explored late adolescents’ and young adults’ willingness to engage in non-consensual forwarding of sexts (NCFS) and its relation to victim blaming beliefs toward female and male victims. The study further examined important determinants in the development of victim blaming beliefs (e.g., perceived victim blaming of peers). An online survey was conducted among 1343 Belgian respondents of which 78.4% were female (Mage = 21.62 years, SD = 3.57 years). Structural equation modeling showed that victim blaming beliefs (i.e., responsibility-based and characteristic-based) were related to willingness to engage in NCFS, which was related to NCFS, regardless of the victim’s sex. Further, victim blaming beliefs in the context of NCFS were shaped by parents’ and peers’ perceived victim blaming, and respondents’ high levels of narcissism and low levels of empathy. Surprisingly, pornography use was negatively correlated with characteristic-based victim blaming beliefs. Additionally, males and late adolescents appeared to hold more victim blaming beliefs toward female and male victims in comparison with females and young adults. Lastly, the willingness to engage in NCFS was more strongly related to responsibility-based victim blaming (not characteristic-based victim blaming) if the victim was male. The findings demonstrate how victim blaming encourages NCFS and emphasize that educational programs should avoid victim-focused strategies.
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Notes
For more information about this project, please contact the first author of this study.
The study’s preregistered report together with the dataset, syntaxes and results are available on OSF (https://osf.io/q9pu6/).
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This work was supported by Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds KU Leuven under grant number C14/18/017.
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Ethical approval was obtained by the Sociaal-maatschappelijke Ethische Commissie (SMEC) of KU Leuven. For the late adolescent sample, passive parental consent was given two weeks before the start of the survey. Active consent was obtained from the adolescents and young adults.
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Maes, C., Van Ouytsel, J. & Vandenbosch, L. Victim Blaming and Non-Consensual Forwarding of Sexts Among Late Adolescents and Young Adults. Arch Sex Behav 52, 1767–1783 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02537-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02537-2