Attributions and Cognitive Closure: Stereotypes of Perpetrators and Victims of Child Sexual Abuse

Compared to low need for cognitive closure individuals, high need for cognitive closure individuals were expected to make the weakest causal and responsibility attributions about sexual abuse in dyads consisting of female adults and male adolescents compared to other dyads. To assess need for cognitive closure, 129 participants responded to 42 items on the Need for Cognitive Closure Scale utilizing a 5-point Likert scale. To assess attributions of perpetrator and victim dyads, these same participants responded to 12 items on an altered Relationship Attribution Measure utilizing a 5-point Likert scale. These hypotheses were only partially supported. Limitations of this study (e.g., using only self-report measures) and future directions (e.g., alter relationship between perpetrator and victim) for this research were also discussed