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Celebrity status, sex, and variation in psychopathy predicts judgements of and proclivity to generate and distribute deepfake pornography

With the advent of means to generate and disseminate fake, sexualised images of others for the purposes of financial gain, harassment, or sexual gratification, there is a need to assess and understand the public’s awareness and judgements of said behaviour. In two independently-sampled studies, we used moderation (Study 1) and linear mixed effects (Study 2) analyses to investigate whether judgements of deepfaking differed as a function of victim status (celebrity, non-celebrity), victim and participant demographics, and image use (sharing, own sexual gratification), whilst controlling for the potential covariates of psychopathy and beliefs about a just world. We consistently observed more lenient judgements of deepfake generation and dissemination for victims who were celebrities and male, and when images were created for self-sexual gratification rather than being shared. Moreover, lenient judgements, as well as proclivity to act were predicted by greater levels of psychopathy. We discuss our findings in the context of needing to qualitatively understand the general public’s rationale for said disparity in judgements, as well as identifying and combating barriers to disclose victimisation. Open data and a preprint of this paper are available at https://osf.io/fp85q/?view_only=24ed2820782f4c2f9c19352f97d58611.