2024 Volume 33 Issue 1 Pages 21-31
A recent legal development lifted the ban on real-name reporting of “specified juveniles” (18- and 19-year-olds). Following the individualization theory, this study aimed to test a hypothesis that posits a reciprocal mechanism between real-name reporting and causal attribution. To this end, scenarios depicting crimes of forcible sexual intercourse and damage to property were used. Study 1 (N=820) revealed that support for real-name reporting was positively related to dispositional attribution and negatively to situational attribution in both scenarios. Study 2 (N=1,042) found that respondents exposed to real-name reporting, compared to those exposed to anonymous reporting, tended to attribute the cause of crime to the offender’s disposition in the forcible sexual intercourse scenario. In summary, the two studies suggest the existence of a reciprocal mechanism in which those with high dispositional attribution tendencies are more supportive of real-name reporting and such reporting strengthens dispositional attribution, at least for the scenario depicting forcible sexual intercourse.
