Abstract
Research has documented that individuals place responsibility on victims for their involvement in instances of violent crimes. Gender roles, stereotypes, and sexism have all contributed to a specific pattern of attributing responsibility for women as victims. Simultaneously, the continuation of gender roles and sexism have led to violent crimes, specifically rape, against women. Prior pilot data has shown correlations between gender and general responsibility scenarios, victim perpetrator sexual responsibility vignettes, ambivalent sexism scores, and attitudes about reality scores. The present study extended these findings to demonstrate that, on top of attitudinal measures, empathy, experience of violence, and psychopathy are related to victim responsibility. People higher in empathy, but lower in psychopathy attribute less responsibility to victims.