The complexity of blame: investigating college students' perceptions of sexual violence

Title IX mandates universities provide sexual violence (SV) prevention programs. Research suggests these programs impact perceptions of bystander blame, but we don’t know if they impact victim and perpetrator blame. This study uses survey and interview data from 51 college students to explore this issue. Results suggest the assignment of blame is complex and contingent on whether participants responded via surveys or interviews. When reading SV scenarios and answering survey questions, students generally exonerated the victims and blamed the perpetrators. However, during follow-up interviews, students frequently invoked victim blaming ideologies and contradicted their earlier survey responses. Thus, while survey findings suggest campus programming increases the likelihood that students will hold perpetrators, rather than victims, responsible for sexual violence, interview findings suggest rape culture and implicit biases continue to influence students’ perceptions of blame. These results highlight the complexity of blame and have implications for future approaches to SV prevention programming.