Investigating victim blame - Applying Lerner’s Just World Theory onromance scams: A quantitative analysis

Victims of romance scams are often held responsible and blamed for their ownvictimisation. It is still not sufficiently clear why victim blaming occurs sofrequently in this context in particular. One explanation is provided by Lerner'spsychological theory Belief in a Just World (BJW), which has been repeatedlytested in a criminological context over the last few decades, but has hardly everbeen applied to romance scams. The theory assumes that people who have astrong belief in a just world tend to blame victims more in order to shield oneselffrom the negative aspects of reality. This thesis tested the theory in the context ofromance scams within a vignette study of undergraduate criminology students atMalmö University. The primary aim was to find out whether the BJW theory is atall suitable for explaining victim blaming in this context and to investigate therelationship between BJW and victim blaming. The study itself had to contendwith a small sample size and the associated problems, particularly in relation totype II error, which meant that there were no clear results.