Abstract
Delayed allegations of sexual misconduct have garnered much media attention, especially when allegations involve public figures such as politicians. In the current chapter, we discuss two main tenets related to the politics of sexual misconduct allegations. First, we argue that although individuals may wait years or decades before reporting valid experiences of sexual misconduct, delayed reporting is not without mnemonic consequences. Memory undergoes deterioration and distortion over time, so even in valid cases, the fading and reconstruction of event details are highly likely to take place. Further, as time passes, one’s susceptibility to misinformation and false memory production increase alongside natural processes of memory deterioration. We offer a framework to evaluate delayed allegations of sexual misconduct where we outline several event characteristics (e.g., repetition, exposure to post-event information) that contribute to memory reliability. We use two high-profile allegations of sexual misconduct involving US Supreme Court nominees to illustrate these processes. In the second half of the paper, we discuss the influence of various sociopolitical factors (e.g., political orientation, social media, social movements) on adults’ perceptions of sexual misconduct allegations. We conclude by highlighting the need to balance media exposure and scientific scrutiny to ensure that investigations of sexual misconduct in political domains are fair and just.
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Miller, Q.C., London, K., Loftus, E.F. (2023). The Politics of Sexual Misconduct Allegations: A Memory Science Framework. In: Frisby, C.L., Redding, R.E., O'Donohue, W.T., Lilienfeld, S.O. (eds) Ideological and Political Bias in Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29148-7_23
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