Perceptions of Dangerousness and Sentencing in Sex Offender Cases: What Our Research Revealed
For this blog post, I thought I’d follow up from last time with more research. My last post covered my very first research project, an early look into domestic violence and blame attribution. This time, I want to jump ahead to the present and share the latest study I’ve worked on, which was just published a few days ago. Here’s the link to our new article!
We presented this work at the American Psychology-Law Society (AP-LS) conference this past March in beautiful Puerto Rico. The study focused on public perceptions of dangerousness and sentencing recommendations in sexual offense cases, specifically comparing responses to male versus female sex offenders. If you're interested in reading the full paper, there's a link at the bottom of this post, and I'll also be sharing it across social media. But for now, let me take you behind the scenes of what this research involved, why we pursued it, and what we found.
First, some context. Most of the research, legislation, media coverage, and general discourse about sexual offending is overwhelmingly focused on male perpetrators. And that’s understandable to a degree, the vast majority of sexual offenses are, in fact, committed by men (Cortoni et al., 2010). But there's a growing recognition in both academia and criminal justice policy that female sex offenders exist in greater numbers than we once thought, and that the harm they cause is just as severe. Victims (many of whom are children) experience long-lasting psychological, interpersonal, and behavioral consequences, regardless of the perpetrator’s gender (Gannon & Cortoni, 2010).
Despite this, female sexual offenders are often overlooked. They’re underrepresented in academic literature, legal policies, and risk assessment tools. Even public and professional perceptions tend to be skewed. People often assume women are less capable of such violence, or if they do offend, it's because they were coerced, manipulated, or mentally unwell. There's a persistent gender narrative that women are nurturing, passive, and less dangerous, a belief system that bleeds into legal outcomes as well (Denov, 2004).
So we wanted to know: How deep does this bias go? Are these gendered perceptions affecting how people judge dangerousness and determine punishment? That’s the core question our research sought to answer.
Study Design
We designed a vignette-based study and recruited 95 participants through an online research pool. After excluding participants who failed a manipulation check, our final sample consisted of 82 individuals. Roughly two-thirds were White, and just over half were female.
Each participant was randomly assigned one of three vignettes describing a sexual offense. In every version, the victim was an 8-year-old female that had been assaulted by a stepparent. What varied was the identity of the perpetrator(s):
In the first condition, the offender was the child’s stepfather (male).
In the second, it was the stepmother (female).
In the third, both stepmother and stepfather were co-defendants who offended together.
After reading their assigned vignette, participants answered several questions. These included sentencing recommendations for the perpetrator (ranging from probation to 25 years to life), assessments of the offender’s dangerousness, perceived need for mandated treatment, and potential motivations behind the crime (e.g., mental illness, substance abuse, past trauma).
We also included measures of individual differences: participants completed a Need for Cognition (NFC) scale—a measure that captures how much a person enjoys and engages in effortful cognitive activity (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982)—as well as a Gender Role Beliefs Scale (GRBS), which assesses adherence to traditional gender norms (Kerr & Holden, 1996).
Findings
Here’s where it gets really interesting.
First, and perhaps most surprisingly, we found no significant difference in sentencing recommendations between male and female offenders. That’s right, participants gave roughly equal prison sentences regardless of the offender's gender.
But when asked about perceived dangerousness, participants consistently rated the male offender as more dangerous than the female offender, even when both had committed the exact same crime. This trend held across all three conditions, including the co-defendant scenario where both stepmother and stepfather offended together. Despite identical behavior, the male was seen as more likely to reoffend.
That distinction between punishment and perception was striking. It suggests that while participants may feel obligated to give equal sentences (perhaps due to the severity of the crime), they still internally categorize male offenders as more threatening.
The Role of Cognitive Style
Then we dug into the role of cognitive style—specifically, Need for Cognition.
We found that NFC moderated the relationship between offender gender and sentencing recommendation. Participants high in NFC that is, those who engage in more analytical and detail-oriented thinking, actually sentenced male offenders more harshly than female offenders. But here’s the twist: participants low in NFC (those who tend to rely on heuristic or "gut-level" judgments) gave longer sentences to female offenders than to males.
This was unexpected and fascinating. It suggests that participants low in NFC might find female-perpetrated sexual violence so anomalous, so outside their norm, that it seems especially shocking, almost like it’s a violation of some deeper moral expectation. In contrast, high NFC participants may have been more likely to rationalize or contextualize the female offender’s behavior as being driven by other factors, like mental illness or coercion.
Figure 1: Observed Interaction
Gender Role Beliefs
Next, we looked at how traditional versus feministic beliefs about gender roles influenced perceptions.
Not surprisingly, participants with more traditional gender role beliefs were significantly more likely to attribute female offending to external causes—mental illness, substance use, past trauma, etc. This wasn’t the case for male offenders or co-defendant scenarios. Essentially, when the perpetrator was female, participants with traditional beliefs sought out mitigating explanations. When the offender was male or part of a duo, those same participants were less likely to do so. This indicates to us that there is a very specific gendered lens through which female offenders are perceived. Women are “not supposed” to commit sexual violence, so when they do, people (especially those with traditional views) look for outside forces that might have led them there. It’s a kind of narrative rescue attempt.
Interpreting the Findings
So, what do we make of all this?
The lack of a sentencing difference might suggest progress, maybe people are starting to move beyond gender when considering punishment. But the perception gap remains stark. People still see male offenders as inherently more dangerous, and the lens through which female offenders are evaluated is heavily shaped by preexisting beliefs about gender roles and behavior.
These biases can have real-world consequences. Research consistently shows that female sex offenders receive more lenient sentences (Cortoni, Hanson, & Coache, 2010; Johansson-Love & Fremouw, 2006), and our findings suggest that societal perceptions may be driving these disparities, even if people don’t consciously endorse them.
Limitations and Future Directions
Before we get too excited, this study has several limitations. First off, our sample size was modest: 82 participants is solid, but larger samples are always better. Also, our vignettes involved a young female victim. It’s entirely possible that results would look different if the victim were male, or if the offender-victim dynamic were more ambiguous. That’s something we’re hoping to explore in future research.
We also want to examine whether these patterns hold across different types of sexual offenses or different relational contexts. Does the stepmother-stepdaughter dynamic activate the same biases as a teacher-student case? What happens when we change the race or socioeconomic status of the offender? Lot’s of questions, but that’s what research generate!
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, our study underscores the complex and often subconscious ways that gender, cognition, and belief systems influence how we perceive crime and criminality. People may endorse gender equality in the abstract but still cling to outdated assumptions when confronted with a female perpetrator. The idea that “women don’t do things like that” lingers, subtly shaping how we assess danger, responsibility, and justice.
Our hope is that this research sparks more nuanced conversations about gender and crime. The criminal justice system doesn’t operate in a vacuum, it reflects the values, biases, and blind spots of the society it serves. If we’re going to make that system fairer and more effective, we need to understand how those biases work.
We’re currently in the early stages of planning a follow-up study to explore some of these different questions and respond to the limitations. With any luck, we’ll be presenting those results at next year’s AP-LS conference and hopefully getting that work published as well.
Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to check out the full study (link below), reach out with questions, or share your thoughts. Stay curious—and keep asking the uncomfortable questions. That’s where the real insight begins.
Here’s the citation for our article:
Gamache, K., Zaitchik, M. C., Platania, J., & Pontbriand, W. (2025). Sentence Determination as a Function of Sex Offender Gender. Journal of Psychology & Behavioral Science, 13, 31-41. https://doi.org/10.15640/jpbs.v13p4
References:
Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1982). The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42(1), 116–131.
Cortoni, F., Hanson, R. K., & Coache, M. È. (2010). The recidivism rates of female sexual offenders are low: A meta-analysis. Sexual Abuse, 22(4), 387–401.
Denov, M. S. (2004). Perspectives on female sex offending: A culture of denial. Routledge.
Gannon, T. A., & Cortoni, F. (Eds.). (2010). Female sexual offenders: Theory, assessment, and treatment. John Wiley & Sons.
Johansson-Love, J., & Fremouw, W. (2006). A critique of the female sexual perpetrator research. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 11(1), 12–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2005.05.001
Kerr, B. A., & Holden, R. R. (1996). Development of the Gender Role Beliefs Scale (GRBS). Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 11(5), 3–16.
