Survivors as Agents: How Linguistic Agency Impacts Perceptions of Survivors and Perpetrators of Sexual Assault

People use linguistic cues to determine responsibility. Such linguistic cues can be used strategically to deflect blame from perpetrators onto survivors. We hypothesized that a linguistic pattern in which survivors are framed more agentically than perpetrators is both prevalent in news media and leads readers to blame survivors for assault. Across 1738 sentences taken from 494 U.S. news articles ranging in political skew, we found that as political lean of news sources became more liberal, a linguistic pattern of survivor agency bias emerged; survivors were more agentic than perpetrators. We next tested how this pattern shaped culpability. Across 2 experimental studies, participants (N = 1,238) read sentences where either survivors or perpetrators of assault were framed agentically. Participants who read sentences framing survivors (vs. perpetrators) as agentic then found survivors of sexual more responsible and the perpetrators more likable. Implications of subtle patterns in media on socialization are discussed.