Who has to tell their trauma story and how hard will it be? Influence of cultural stigma and narrative redemption on the storying of sexual violence

Abstract

Although survivors of sexual violence have shared their stories with the public on social media and mass media platforms in growing numbers, less is known about how general audiences perceive such trauma stories. These perceptions can have profound consequences for survivor mental health. In the present experimental, vignette-based studies, we anticipated that cultural stigma surrounding sexual violence and cultural preference for positive (redemptive) endings to adversity in the United States (U.S.) would shape perceptions. Four samples of U.S. adults (N = 1872) rated first-person narratives of 6 more stigmatizing (i.e., sexual violence) or less stigmatizing (e.g., natural disaster) traumatic events. Confirming pre-registered hypotheses, sexual violence trauma (versus other types of trauma) stories were perceived as more difficult to tell, and their storytellers less likeable, even when they had redemptive endings. Disconfirming other pre-registered hypotheses, redemptive (versus negative) story endings did not boost the perceived likelihood or obligation to share a sexual violence trauma story. Rather, redemptive (versus negative) story endings only boosted the perceived likelihood, obligation, and ease of telling other, less stigmatizing types of trauma stories. Findings suggest that sexual violence survivors do not benefit, to the same degree as other survivors, from telling their stories with the culturally valued narrative template of redemption. Clinical and societal implications of the less receptive climate for sexual violence stories are discussed.

Fig 1. Mean ratings of trauma stories by trauma type and ending (Study 1).

Fig 2. Mean ratings of trauma stories by trauma type and ending (Study 2).

Fig 3. Hypotheses 4 and 5 multi-level model results for the effect of story ending on perceptions of sharing moderated by trauma type (Study 1).

Sexual vs. other trauma is a bivariate categorical variable coded as 1 if the story depicted childhood sexual abuse or adult sexual assault, and 0 if other type of trauma (car accident, hurricane, childhood life-threatening illness, or traumatic loss); CI = 95% confidence interval; LL = lower limit; UL = upper limit.