Aggressive behaviors occur when one person, a perpetrator, intentionally harms another person, a victim (e.g., Parrott and Giancola, 2007). When reporting their judgments, victims often report aggressive behaviors as being more harmful than perpetrators do—a so-called victim-perpetrator asymmetry. This asymmetry is well-established (Baumeister et al., 1990; Elshout et al., 2017; Ent and Parton, 2019; McCarthy and Rivers, 2021); however, there is scant experimental tests of the conditions under which the effect is especially strong. In that vein, the current Registered Report examined whether the victim-perpetrator asymmetry is stronger in conditions when people feel they will be evaluated for blameworthiness. In our first study, participants read a vignette describing an aggressive interaction and were assigned to adopt the perspective of either the victim or the perpetrator. In our second study, participants either recalled an instance when they intentionally harmed another person or an instance when they were harmed by another person. Further, in both studies, half the participants were told we were interested in determining who was more to blame in the situation and half received no such instructions. All participants then rated the harmfulness of the aggressive behavior. The victim-perpetrator asymmetry was unchanged by our blameworthiness manipulations in both studies. These results did not support our hypothesis that telling people they will be evaluated for blame will increase victims' and perpetrators' judgments of aggressive behaviors.

当一个人，一个施暴者，故意伤害另一个人，一个受害者时，就会发生攻击性行为（例如，Parrott 和 Giancola，2007）。在报告他们的判断时，受害者经常报告攻击性行为比肇事者更有害——所谓的受害者-肇事者不对称。这种不对称性是公认的（Baumeister 等人，1990 年；Elshout 等人，2017 年；Ent 和 Parton，2019 年；McCarthy 和 Rivers，2021 年）；然而，对于效果特别强的条件，几乎没有实验测试。在这方面，当前的注册报告检查了在人们认为他们将被评估是否应受责备的情况下，受害者 - 施暴者的不对称性是否更强。在我们的第一项研究中，参与者阅读描述攻击性互动的小插曲，并被分配采用受害者或施暴者的观点。在我们的第二项研究中，参与者要么回忆起他们故意伤害另一个人的例子，要么回忆起他们被另一个人伤害的例子。此外，在这两项研究中，一半的参与者被告知我们有兴趣确定在这种情况下谁更应该受到责备，而一半的参与者没有收到这样的指示。然后，所有参与者都对攻击行为的危害性进行了评分。在这两项研究中，我们对可责备性的操纵并未改变受害者 - 施暴者的不对称性。这些结果不支持我们的假设，即告诉人们他们将接受责任评估会增加受害者和肇事者对攻击性行为的判断。