Gamers’ Attitudes towards Victims of Crime: An Interview Study Using Vignettes

Introduction

The tripartite (three component) view of attitudes (Katz & Stotland, 1959; Rosenberg & Havland, 1960) argues that an attitude is an unobservable psychological construct which manifests itself in beliefs, feelings and attitudes. Recent research has suggested that an attitude may exist as a result of one of these three components (Fazio & Zanna, 1981; Tykler & Rasinzki, 1984), and the three components of attitude formation through cognition, affective processes and behavioural processes, remain a key element of more recent theories. Horgan, Muhlau, McCormack and Reider (2008) in their research on attitudes towards domestic violence in Ireland, have argued that norms regarding tolerance for abuse can manifest themselves in attitudes related to victim empathy, victim blaming and willingness to help. The present research was designed to explore attitudes towards victims of crime and the possible impact of violent video game playing on the attitudes of young peoples and adults. Attitudes towards victims are explored thorough a consideration of the three elements of attitudes, the cognitive element which can be seen to be related to victim blaming, the affective element which is related to the variable victim liking, and the behavioural element which is seen to be related to victim helping.

The literature on attitudes to victims has focused mainly on on attitudes to victims of rape (Whately & Rigio, 1993; Davies, Pollard & Archer, 2001; Wakelin & Long, 2003; Doherty & Anderson, 2004), domestic assault (Sugerman & Frankel, 1995), and victims of bullying (Baldry & Farrington, 2004; Rigby, 2006; Gini et al., 2008). Similar research on attitudes in children can be seen in the work on attitudes towards bullying, although there is some research that has explored empathy as a measure of children’s attitudes and feeling towards other types of peer victims (Funk et al., 2003, 2004; Porter & Starcevic, 2007). The research indicates that in general, children do express positive, prosocial and supportive thoughts towards victims of bullying (Menesini et al., 1997; Pervin & Turner, 1998; Smith & Levan, 1995), while indicating that children are generally upset by (and dislike) bullying and fighting (Mooney, Creeser, & Blatchford, 1991; Rigby & Slee, 1991,1993; Whitney & Smith, 1993).