| Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools. |
DOI: 10.1177/088626091006001003 © 1991 SAGE Publications Rape Victims' Style of Self-Presentation and Secondary Victimization by the EnvironmentAn ExperimentFree University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Circon-Group for Training and Organization Development Rape victims differ in their style of communicating their experience to others in their environment. An emotional style of self-presentation can be distinguished from a numbed style of presentation. The present experiment tests the hypothesis that a numbed style of self-presentation, as compared to an emotional one, will result more strongly in secondary victimization by the environment. Experimental results suggest among others that a victim characterized by an emotional self-presentation is more strongly perceived as a woman who exhibited caution, and as a person who was not responsible for the situation. Some implications of this perceptual bias in observers are discussed.
|