Abstract
College students (N = 168) from northern California examined the influence of victim weight, clothing, and sexual history on empathy, blame, and rape myth acceptance toward a perpetrator and victim in an acquaintance rape. Participants read a fictional interview of a rape victim describing events prior to the rape and completed questionnaires. Victim weight (thin versus obese), clothing (revealing versus modest), and sexual history (virgin versus promiscuous) were manipulated within the vignettes. While participants believed the interview described a rape, no significant difference for blame, empathy, or rape myth acceptance was found for the victim. For the perpetrator, participants placed more blame and responsibility on the perpetrator of the obese victim, and had higher empathy toward the perpetrator of the virgin victim. Results are discussed in terms of blame attributions. Future research should continue to analyze the effect of weight in cases of rape and increase awareness of rape biases.