Article révisé par les pairs
Résumé : When learning of an aggression, people think that they could have foreseen it, which may lead to victim blame. We examined how position identification with the victim may affect this feeling of foreseeability and blame. Participants read a testimony, which ended either with or without a sexual aggression. To manipulate position identification, they were then asked to answer some questions phrased either in the active or passive voice. As expected, in the passive voice condition, participants identified more with the victim’s position and blamed the perpetrator more on learning of the outcome. Moreover, they judged the aggression as less foreseeable. This study sheds new light on how linguistic factors may surreptitiously affect witnesses’ judgments through position identification.