To date a “victim”: testing the stigma of the victim label through an experimental audit of dating apps

Objectives Publicly revealing prior victimization could produce negative reactions and could affect a self-identified victim’s initiation of romantic relationships. Methods To measure victim stigma, an experimental audit design used six study profiles, each with pictures of a Black, Latinx, or White cisgender female or cis-male and bio text that in the experimental condition included a briefstatement of prior victimization, to compare match rates of profiles disclosing prior victimization with identical profiles not disclosing victimization. Results Disclosing victimization reduced total matches for all profiles regardless of sex or race. Racial congruence analyses of matches indicated that relative to the White control profile, all other study profiles were more likely to match with dating app users of a different race/ethnicity, except for the White male victim profile. Conclusions The stigma of the victim label may discourage people from disclosing their prior victimization. Racial congruence findings suggests that victim stigma may differ across different racial and ethnic groups.