Several years ago, I was watching Matthew Shepard murder story on 20/20. On TV, Ms. Elizabeth Vargas interviewed the two offenders and asked them the question: "Did you attack him because he was a gay?" I said to myself, why didn't she ask "Did you attack him because you believed (perceived) he was a gay?" The two questions are different because the first question emphasizes the distinctiveness of victim as a reason for the offense whereas the second question suggests the offender's perception of the distinctiveness is the source of the offense. From the psychological perspective, the distinction is not ignorable.
The similar cognitive error can be found in other media reports about hate or other prejudice-motivated offenses. It is common to read a news article that explains a prejudice-motivated offense as generated by the victim's race, religion, sexual orientation, or national origin, among others. In other words, people tend to use the victims' group memberships or distinctiveness (e.g., race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religious beliefs) to explain prejudice and related crime, assuming that individuals become the victims of prejudice or hate crime because of their group memberships.
I think that the cognitive error results mainly from two misunderstandings:
First, this error may result from misunderstanding the legal definition of hate crime. The law defines a hate crime as an offense in which the victim is targeted because of their actual or perceived race, color, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or national origin. This definition is based on federal legislation that defines a hate crime as an offense "that manifests evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity" (Hate Crime Statistics Act, 1990) or as a crime in which "the defendant intentionally selects a victim, ... because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability or sexual orientation of any person" (Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Public Law 103-322, H.R. 3355).
On the basis of the legal definition, some reporters and researchers of prejudice and hate crime conceptualize prejudice and hate crime as motivated by the distinctiveness of the victim(s), because the offender targets only victims with different group memberships. In reality, however, the legal definition specifies the mental state of the offenders, including: (1) the required criminal intent (mens rea); and (2) the offender's cognitive distortions; rather than suggesting that the victim's group membership is the cause for prejudice or hate crime.
The legal definition of hate crime is a criminal-law definition. According to criminal law, the defendant is guilty of a crime only when the offender's criminal commission or omission occurred with a simultaneous mens rea or criminal intent.
Hate crimes, like other types of criminal offense, require a specific criminal intent, or the presence of mens rea as one of the key elements for establishing the perpetrator's criminal responsibility. The "because" statement in the legal definition of hate crime, regarding the distinctiveness of the victim(s), denotes the offender's mens rea and perceptions of difference in group membership.
The criminal intent (mens rea) for hate crime is not a causal description for the offense (neither is it supposed to be), just as the mens rea for sex offenders who intentionally and knowingly target certain types of victim (e.g., children or women) does not indicate that the victim is the cause of the crime. In other words, legislation-based definitions are not and can never be scientific explanations about the cause-effect relationships between two variables.
Second, people make the cognitive error because they misunderstand the differences between social reality and the offenders' perceptions of the reality. The prejudiced offenders may believe that their offenses or hate are caused by the victims, but their perceptions cannot be used to suggest that the victims' groups cause hate crime. Offenders' reasoning about their offenses tends to misrepresent the reality by blaming their victims, or other factors, rather than seeing themselves as responsible. Empirical research shows that hate offenders' mental state involves using the victim memberships to justify and rationalize hate crime, including applying such methods as denials of injury, the victim, and the responsibility, condemnation of the condemners, and "appeal to higher loyalties" by claiming the so called "racial" motivation behind their criminal and other activities. Research in social cognition has also demonstrated that self-serving bias tends to characterize people's explanations for their actions. This bias includes rationalizing or justifying their actions, making them desirable and reasonable from the agent's viewpoint.
Read my related post "An overlooked problem with the new hate crimes bill."
In short, mistaking the legal definition of hate crime for the scientific explanation for the offense actually puts the blame on the victim, rather than on the offender. Why is it the case? If the crime victim is explained as the cause of the offense, the offender will be judged as less guilty and less responsible for the offense (therefore, the offense becomes more justifiable).
