Emotional Stereotypes of Crime Victims: A Cross-Cultural Replication of the Emotional Victim Effect in Turkey

This study aims to examine societal expectations regarding the emotional responses of crime victims and to reveal the cultural and gender-based patterns of the emotional victim effect (EVE) in the Turkish context. The EVE literature shows that victims are perceived as more credible when they display emotional expressions consistent with normative expectations; however, these findings are largely based on Western samples. The present study directly replicated the paradigm developed by Wrede and Ask (2015) with a Turkish sample and examined how cultural differences shape the structure of emotional expectations. A total of 689 adults from across Turkey participated in the study. Participants were presented with scenarios involving five different types of crimes (battery, rape, threat, robbery, and burglary) and asked to assess the likelihood of female and male victims experiencing specific emotions. Factor analyses have shown that, unlike the tripartite structure observed in Western samples, situation-focused and other-directed emotions converge into a single dimension. This dimension is termed “Active-Reactive Emotions” (fear, anxiety, anger, hatred); shame, guilt, and sadness, on the other hand, constitute the “Inward-Directed Emotions” dimension. The findings revealed that female victims were expected to show higher emotional responses than males in both emotion dimensions. However, gender-based differences disappeared in crimes involving high levels of violence, such as rape and battery. The results show that expectations regarding victim emotions are culturally constructed and that EVE is not universal but context-sensitive. These findings offer important implications for recognizing emotional stereotypes in judicial decision-making processes in Turkey and reducing secondary victimization.