Title:

The Role of Empathy in Legal Evaluations of Sex Trafficking Survivors

Sex trafficking is a worldwide crime and, despite greater public attention recently devoted to the subject, its prevalence has only continued to increase (Polaris, 2020). Individuals who have been sex trafficked are often misidentified as prostitution offenders in both the public and legal sphere due, in part, to pervasive misunderstanding of the crime. Furthermore, research suggests lower levels of empathy are associated with greater acceptance of myths about prostitution/sex work and sexual violence toward those engaging in commercial sex. The current exploratory research aimed to investigate the effect of empathetic reactions toward sex trafficking on evaluations of legal culpability for survivors of sex trafficking. Participants (N=415) answered a series of questions measuring their emotional atittudes toward sex trafficking and were presented a vignette depicting an alleged trafficking incident before evaluating guilt and arrest certainty for prostitution for the survivor in the vignette. Overall, participants with greater empathy were less likely to recommend arrest (b = -1.48, p < .001, η_p^2 = .12) and find the survivor guilty (b = -.96, p < .001, η_p^2 = .05). These results show the importance of empathetic responses to sex trafficking in supporting victims and emphasizes the significance of emotion, specifically empathy, in implementing a victim-centered approach to policy surrounding sex trafficking.

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