The Perception of Hate Crimes: Study of Cases

The empirical study by Plumm et al. (2010) had an objective to identify the extent to which extra-legal characteristics contributed to the jury’s victim-blaming. To meet the objective, the authors conducted two jury simulation studies. In Study One, the jury members were grouped according to their level of homophobia, whereas the details of the crime varied between a first-degree assault and a bias-motivated crime (Plumm & Leighton, 2019). In Study Two, the jury was presented with the details of the assault, indicating whether the hate crime happened at the gay or local bar and with or without provocation on the part of the victim. In both studies, the results demonstrated that extra-legal details contributed to the victim-blaming. As in the first case, the level of support for the LGBTQ+ community was associated directly with the level of compassion for the victim. The second case demonstrated that provocation at the local bar undermined the severity of the hate crime committed against the LGBTQ+ representative (Plumm et al., 2010). The study, although presenting valuable results on the topic, is limited in terms of generalization, as the sample was rather homogenous.

The studied article sufficiently informs my personal learning objective (PLO). Based on the aforementioned findings, I can assume that the nature of hate derives from the social context that perpetuates the image of minorities. In fact, the idea of victim-blaming demonstrates that people’s biased approach to the perception of the world makes minorities even more marginalized from society and justifies the hate directed at a certain group (Plumm et al., 2010). Thus, when the concept of hate emerges in society, the in-group tends to extrapolate the hate on various aspects of life, whereas the out-group eventually becomes even more susceptible to the hatred (Dukes & Gaither, 2017). Based on this article, my next sphere of interest which can improve my PLO is the cognitive processes behind justifying hate crimes within the out-groups. While in this article, authors discover the perception of hate by the in-group, I want to further investigate and compare how likely the members of the out-group are to blame the victim to master my PLO.

References

Dukes, K. N., & Gaither, S. E. (2017). Black racial stereotypes and victim blaming: Implications for media coverage and criminal proceedings in cases of police violence against racial and ethnic minorities. Journal of Social Issues, 73(4), 789-807. Web.

Plumm, K. M., Terrance, C. A., Henderson, V. R., & Ellingson, H. (2010). Victim blame in a hate crime motivated by sexual orientation. Journal of Homosexuality, 57(2), 267-286. Web.

Plumm, K. M., & Leighton, K. N. (2019). Sexual orientation and gender bias motivated violent crime. Advances in psychology and law, 175-196. Web.