ABSTRACT

We developed the first Fear of False Accusations scale, measuring the public’s fear of personally being the target of untrue child sexual abuse allegations despite no actual wrongdoing as well as the fear of false allegations being a common problem in society. The scale was statistically reliable within a diverse sample of 964 participants. Several months later, in an ostensibly unrelated mock trial experiment, a subset of the participants assumed the role of mock juror and considered a criminal case involving an accusation of child sexual abuse. As predicted, (a) mock jurors with higher levels of fear were less likely than others to believe a specific child sexual abuse allegation (but did not differ in ratings of victim credibility nor responsibility), (b) men had significantly higher levels of this fear than did women, and (c) mediational analyses revealed that gender differences in fear partially explained men’s tendency to believe the child abuse allegation less than women did. This research is important for developing the first empirically validated measure of fear of false accusation and linking this fear to perceptions of specific child sexual abuse allegations, and for finding a partial explanation for gender differences in mock jurors’ reactions to child sexual abuse allegations.

摘要

我们开发了第一个对虚假指控的恐惧量表，衡量公众对个人成为不真实的儿童性虐待指控的目标的恐惧，尽管没有实际的不当行为，以及对虚假指控的恐惧是社会的普遍问题。该量表在 964 名参与者的不同样本中在统计上是可靠的。几个月后，在一个表面上无关的模拟审判实验中，一部分参与者扮演了模拟陪审员的角色，并考虑了一起指控儿童性虐待的刑事案件。正如预测的那样，(a) 具有更高恐惧程度的模拟陪审员比其他人更不可能相信特定的儿童性虐待指控（但在受害者可信度或责任方面没有差异），(b) 男性的这种程度要高得多比女人更害怕，(c) 中介分析表明，恐惧中的性别差异部分解释了男性比女性更相信虐待儿童指控的倾向。这项研究对于开发第一个经过实证验证的对虚假指控的恐惧的衡量标准很重要，并将这种恐惧与对特定儿童性虐待指控的看法联系起来，并为模拟陪审员对儿童性虐待指控的反应中的性别差异找到部分解释。