ABSTRACT
Background: The perceived culpability of a sexual crime perpetrator may be attributed as a function of both the legality of the substance used when committing the crime and the severity of the sex crime. Objectives: The experiment applied attribution theory to examine the simultaneous impact of substance use legality and sexual crime severity on participants' perceptions of responsibility, blame, and punishment toward sexual crime perpetrators. Methods: Participants (N = 461) in this 4 (substance legality) × 2 (sexual crime severity) experimental design were randomly assigned to one of eight conditions to read a police report depicting a sexual offense. The independent variable of substance legality was manipulated as the perpetrator's usage of no substance (sober), alcohol (legal), marijuana (partially legal), or cocaine (illegal) at the time of the crime. The second independent variable of sexual crime severity was manipulated as the offense of indecent exposure (mild offense) or rape (severe offense) committed by the perpetrator. After reading the manipulated vignette, participants rated outcome measures involving the perpetrator's responsibility, blame (guilt attributions, external attributions, and mental element attributions), and punishment (punishment attitudes and punishment severity). Results: Factorial MANCOVA and ANCOVAs were performed. Participants tended to attribute greater responsibility and blame, but not punishment, toward the sober perpetrator compared to the perpetrator intoxicated with alcohol, marijuana, or cocaine. Additionally, participants attributed significantly greater responsibility, blame, and punishment toward the perpetrator of rape compared to indecent exposure. Conclusions: The experiment supported that both substance legality and sexual crime severity uniquely served as contextual factors that played roles in people's judgments about crimes. Findings offer drug policy information regarding how substance intoxication is perceived as a mitigating excuse in criminal justice systems for committing sexual offenses.
Subject(s)
Cannabis , Cocaine , Crime Victims , Rape , Humans , Crime , Punishment , Social PerceptionABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: Colleges maintain alcohol policies in response to student alcohol misuse, and sanctions for violating these policies often mandate students to attend alcohol education and/or counseling (Anderson & Gadaleto, 2021). Electronic Checkup to Go (e-CHUG) is a widely used online motivational intervention program that provides feedback to college students to encourage them to alter their drinking behaviors (eCheckup to Go, 2021). While measures included in e-CHUG have clear clinical utility, their psychometric properties have not been evaluated. The present study was designed to evaluate the factor structure and validity of the 18-item drinking motives scale included in the intervention. METHOD: Participants were 3,546 students from a large public university who were mandated to complete e-CHUG (58% male, MAge = 19.06, SDAge = 1.35) between 2013 and 2021. Students completed a battery of measures, including questions regarding alcohol consumption, drinking motives and consequences, and the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). RESULTS: An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to investigate the structure of the drinking motives scale. Two factors were retained: The first factor represented coping motives, and the second factor represented a mixture of enhancement and social motives. Hierarchical regression analyses explored the associations between the retained drinking motives factors and alcohol-related variables. Both coping motives and enhancement/social motives positively and uniquely predicted drinking consequences and AUDIT scores. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides support for the construct and incremental validity of e-CHUG's drinking motives measure and could have important implications for the consideration of drinking motives during e-CHUG interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
