When It's Bad to Be Lucky: Observers' Judgments of Fortuitous Victims

We framed crime victims as lucky, through downward counterfactual comparisons, and tested this "luck framing" influence on observers' judgments of the victims. Victims framed as lucky and aware (Experiment 1) or unaware (Experiment 3) of their luck were rated as in need of less social...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBasic and applied social psychology Vol. 43; no. 2; pp. 110 - 119
Main Authors Wrede, Olof, Mac Giolla, Erik
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Mahwah Routledge 04.03.2021
Psychology Press
Subjects
Chance
Compensation
Court decisions
Crime
Experiments
Frame analysis
Observation
Psychology (excluding Applied Psychology)
Psykologi (exklusive tillämpad psykologi)
Restitution
Social support
Victims
Victims of crime
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Summary:We framed crime victims as lucky, through downward counterfactual comparisons, and tested this "luck framing" influence on observers' judgments of the victims. Victims framed as lucky and aware (Experiment 1) or unaware (Experiment 3) of their luck were rated as in need of less social support than victims who were not framed as lucky. This luck framing effect generalized to victim compensation: lucky aware victims were rated as deserving of less compensation compared to unlucky victims (Experiment 2). In contrast, luck framing of victims had little influence on observers' judgments of the severity of the sentence a perpetrator should receive (Experiment 4). Taken together, for crime victims it can be bad to be thought of as lucky.
ISSN:0197-3533
1532-4834
1532-4834
DOI:10.1080/01973533.2020.1863797