“Blaming The Victim” Under Memory Load

Goldinger, Stephen D.; Kleider, Heather M.; Azuma, Tamiko; Beike, Denise R.

doi:10.1111/1467-9280.01423

Cited by 72 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(30 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Our experiments do not lend support to studies showing how a victim can be ascribed more blame for their misfortune, especially when a counterfactual alternative is readily available (e.g., Branscombe et al, 1996;Goldinger et al, 2003;Macrae et al, 1993). This paper is nonetheless relevant because it posits that the victim is not always ascribed more blame, even if that victim is the focal agent of a story.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 76%

Counterfactual thinking: Study of the focus effect of scenarios and blame ascriptions to victim and perpetrator

Marques

Quelhas

Juhos

et al. 2014

Análise Psicológica

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In two different studies we examined the focus effect of a scenario (i.e., the fact that a given character is the protagonist of a story) on two interconnected domains: the generation of counterfactual thoughts and the ascription of blame. It was hypothesised that being the focal agent of a story would not only lead to more counterfactuals centred on him or her, but also to greater ascriptions of blame as it would be easier to imagine how that actor could have behaved differently had he chosen or wanted to, and thus avoided a deleterious outcome. Different negatively-valenced scenarios depicting a certain misfortune such as a mugging were created in which victim, perpetrator or both characters, were the centre of the story. Results showed that placing either victim or perpetrator as the protagonist of a scenario increases the number of counterfactual thoughts centred on that character, but does not necessarily increase the blame attributed to him or her as the perpetrator was always ascribed more blame than the victim, irrespective of who was the protagonist. Study 2's findings replicate those of Study 1 even with a different experimental design, modified materials, and various counterbalancing measures, hence suggesting that being the protagonist enables one to easily consider counterfactual alternatives involving that actor, but does not prevent one from identifying who is rightfully to blame for a given misfortune. The results and their implications were interpreted according to different theoretical perspectives and possible future avenues of research are discussed.

show abstract

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 76%

Counterfactual thinking: Study of the focus effect of scenarios and blame ascriptions to victim and perpetrator

Marques

Quelhas

Juhos

et al. 2014

Análise Psicológica

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Misfortunes or unwanted emotions may be attributed to causes outside of their control (externalizing behavior), whereas positive events or emotions may be attributed to personal characteristics (internalizing behavior). 37,38 It is likely that adaptive coping entails flexibility in attributions and coping behavior depends on the adversity faced. Some adolescents exhibited an internal explanatory style by attributing their potential loss of fertility to something they did or deserved.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coping Styles of Female Adolescent Cancer Patients with Potential Fertility Loss

Quinn

Murphy

Knapp

et al. 2013

Journal of Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative study was to assess the coping styles of female adolescent cancer patients regarding potential loss of fertility. Expectations and desires for the future, coping styles in typical adolescence, and coping styles when faced with potential loss of fertility due to cancer treatment are discussed. Methods: Female adolescents diagnosed with cancer aged 12-18 years at study (N = 14) were administered a 10-item values clarification tool to pilot test the readability and relevance of the items on reproductive concerns, followed by a cognitive debriefing interview asking participants how they would respond to each item. These qualitative responses were assessed for coping style type using the constant comparative approach. Results: All adolescent participants reported having a strong desire for biological children in the future. Reactions to questions regarding the loss of fertility fell into two categories of coping styles: emotion-focused coping or problem-focused (engagement) coping. Within emotion-focused coping, there were three distinct styles: externalizing attribution style, internalizing attribution style, and repressive adaptation. Problem-focused coping adolescents displayed optimism. Conclusion: Successful interventions aimed at promoting adaptive coping styles should seek to uncover adolescents' values about future parenthood and reproduction. Development of an age-appropriate assessment to stimulate dialogue regarding fertility and initiate an adolescent's cognitive processing of potential fertility loss is warranted.

show abstract

“…Thus, we added three 'neutral' words to the final target sentence of each item (identical across conditions within an item). Secondly, previous research has begun to demonstrate the importance of working memory in counterfactual thinking, with studies showing that counterfactual judgements are impaired under high working memory load (Goldinger, Kleider, Azuma, & Beike, 2003), and that reduced working memory capacity correlates with poorer performance on tasks that require counterfactual thinking (Drayton, Turley-Ames, & Guajardo, 2011). However, we are aware of no study that has examined how working memory might influence the incremental processing of counterfactual utterances compared to factual utterances (that only activate representation of a single version of the world).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining the cognitive costs of counterfactual language comprehension: Evidence from ERPs

Ferguson

Cane

2015

Brain Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent empirical research suggests that understanding a counterfactual event (e.g. 'If Josie had revised, she would have passed her exams') activates mental representations of both the factual and counterfactual versions of events. However, it remains unclear when readers switch between these models during comprehension, and whether representing multiple 'worlds' is cognitively effortful. This paper reports two ERP studies where participants read contexts that set up a factual or counterfactual scenario, followed by a second sentence describing a consequence of this event.Critically, this sentence included a noun that was either consistent or inconsistent with the preceding context, and either included a modal verb to indicate reference to the counterfactualworld or not (thus referring to the factual-world). Experiment 2 used adapted versions of the materials used in Experiment 1 to examine the degree to which representing multiple versions of a counterfactual situation makes heavy demands on cognitive resources by measuring individuals' working memory capacity. Results showed that when reference to the counterfactual-world was maintained by the ongoing discourse, readers correctly interpreted events according to the counterfactual-world (i.e. showed larger N400 for inconsistent than consistent words). In contrast, when cues referred back to the factual-world, readers showed no difference between consistent and inconsistent critical words, suggesting that they simultaneously compared information against both possible worlds. These results support previous dualrepresentation accounts for counterfactuals, and provide new evidence that linguistic cues can guide the reader in selecting which world model to evaluate incoming information against.Crucially, we reveal evidence that maintaining and updating a hypothetical model over time relies upon the availability of cognitive resources.

show abstract

“Blaming The Victim” Under Memory Load

Abstract: Abstract-

Cited by 72 publications

References 23 publications

Counterfactual thinking: Study of the focus effect of scenarios and blame ascriptions to victim and perpetrator

Counterfactual thinking: Study of the focus effect of scenarios and blame ascriptions to victim and perpetrator

Coping Styles of Female Adolescent Cancer Patients with Potential Fertility Loss

Examining the cognitive costs of counterfactual language comprehension: Evidence from ERPs

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About