Intra sexual competition & Rape victim blaming: Do we blame the rival victim More when she’s dressed revealingly?

The evolutionary theory of Intra Sexual Competition was researched as part of this thesis to investigate whether a female juror’s level of intra sexual competition was a significant predictor of rape victim blame. In particular we aimed to examine whether female jurors higher in intra sexual competition would blame a female rape victim more when she was wearing revealing clothing as opposed to wearing conservative clothing. Female participants were recruited for this study (n = 165) via a US based website (Mechanical Turk). It was found that females higher in intra sexual competition were significantly more likely to blame a female rape victim than females lower in intra sexual competition. It was also found that a victim whom is dressed in revealing clothing is more likely to be victim blamed than a victim wearing conservative clothing. The interaction effect was not found; rather it was found that women higher in intra sexual competition were equally likely to blame a victim regardless of whether she was dressed in conservative or revealing clothing. The importance of this study findings as well as implications and applications of this study and its findings will be further discussed throughout this research paper