Empathic observation of an innocent victim: The just world revisited.

Aderman, David; Brehm, Sharon S.; Katz, Lawrence B.

doi:10.1037/h0036001

Cited by 108 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…First, as outlined above, mimicry research shows that mimicry makes people more empathic toward others (Stel et al, 2008;Van Baaren et al, 2004). Second, victim blaming research, as noted earlier, demonstrated that empathy for the victim reduced the negative reactions toward victims (Aderman et al, 1974). Combining these insights one would expect that mimicry and victim blaming are related.…”

Section: Mimicry and Victim Blamingmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…Victim blaming can be reduced when observers empathize with the victim. For instance, Aderman, Brehm, and Katz (1974) showed that victims were rated less negatively when observers were instructed to think about how they themselves would feel when being in the victims' situation. Thus, empathy seems to reduce that people act in accordance with their belief in a just world.…”

Section: Victim Blamingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On Mimicry and the Psychology of the Belief in a Just World: Imitating the Behaviors of Others Reduces the Blaming of Innocent Victims

2012

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Innocent victims of crime are often blamed for what happened to them. In this article, we examine the hypothesis that victim blaming can be significantly reduced when people mimic the behavior of the victim or even a person unrelated to the crime. Participants watched a person on a video after which we assessed the extent of their spontaneous mimicry reactions (Study 1) or participants were instructed to mimic or not to mimic the movements of this person (Study 2). Then, they were informed about a rape and criminal assault and judged the degree to which they thought the victims were responsible for the crime. One of the crimes happened to the same person as the person they previously did or did not mimic. The other crime happened to a person unrelated to the mimicry situation. Results of both studies revealed that previously mimicking the victim or an unrelated person reduced the degree to which victims were being blamed.

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Section: Mimicry and Victim Blamingmentioning

confidence: 87%

Section: Victim Blamingmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Mimicry and the Psychology of the Belief in a Just World: Imitating the Behaviors of Others Reduces the Blaming of Innocent Victims

2012

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“…Aderman, Brehm, & Katz, 1974;Brehm & Aderman, 1977;Galper, 1976;Gould & Sigall, 1977;Regan & Totten, 1975); those encouraged to adopt the perspective of another tend to make more situational and fewer dispositional causal attributions than do objective focused participants. In other words, encouraging a perceiver adopt the perspective of another effectively eliminates the actor-observer difference (Jones & Nisbett, 1972), or the tendency to attribute the actions of others to their dispositions but one's own actions to situational factors.…”

mentioning

confidence: 92%

Perspective taking and prejudice reduction: the mediational role of empathy arousal and situational attributions

Vescio¹,

Sechrist²,

Paolucci³

2003

Euro J Social Psych

438

425

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This research was designed to examine whether perspective taking promotes improved intergroup attitudes regardless of the extent that stereotypic perceptions of outgroups are endorsed, as well as examining the mechanisms (attributional or empathy related) by which perspective taking motivates improved intergroup attitudes. Participants were presented with an interview segment where an African American interviewee discussed the difficulties experienced as a result of his membership in a negatively stereotyped group. Materials were presented in a 2 (perspective taking: other focused or objective focused) Â 2 (target stereotypicality: confirming or disconfirming) between participants design. Findings revealed that the manipulation of target stereotypicality influenced subsequent stereotype endorsement; those exposed to a stereotype confirming target later endorsed more stereotypic perceptions of African Americans than did those exposed to a stereotype disconfirming target. However, perspective taking promoted improved intergroup attitudes irrespective of stereotypicality; those encouraged to adopt the perspective of the target later reported more favourable intergroup attitudes than did those who remained detached and objective listeners. Whereas empathy partially mediated the relation between perspective taking and intergroup attitudes, situational attributions were a stronger and more reliable mediator.

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“…Additional evidence supporting the role of empathy in human morality has been explored by social psychologists (Batson 2009;Eisenberg and Fabes 1990;Tyler et al 1997;Wispé 1986), philosophers (Churchland 2011;D'Arms 1998), and natural scientists (Decety and Lamm 2006;de Waal 2008;Preston and de Waal 2002). Likewise, Aderman et al (1974) found that individuals are less prone to blame victims for their own moral adversity when they empathize with them.…”

Section: Deontic Justice As An Empathic Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deontic Justice and Organizational Neuroscience

2016

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According to deontic justice theory, individuals often feel principled moral obligations to uphold norms of justice. That is, standards of justice can be valued for their own sake, even apart from serving self-interested goals. While a growing body of evidence in business ethics supports the notion of deontic justice, skepticism remains. This hesitation results, at least in part, from the absence of a coherent framework for explaining how individuals produce and experience deontic justice. To address this need, we argue that a compelling, yet still missing, step is to gain further understanding into the underlying neural and psychological mechanisms of deontic justice. Here, we advance a theoretical model that disentangles three key processes of deontic justice: The use of justice rules to assess events, cognitive empathy, and affective empathy. Together with reviewing neural systems supporting these processes, broader implications of our model for business ethics scholarship are discussed.

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Empathic observation of an innocent victim: The just world revisited.

Cited by 108 publications

References 8 publications

On Mimicry and the Psychology of the Belief in a Just World: Imitating the Behaviors of Others Reduces the Blaming of Innocent Victims

On Mimicry and the Psychology of the Belief in a Just World: Imitating the Behaviors of Others Reduces the Blaming of Innocent Victims

Perspective taking and prejudice reduction: the mediational role of empathy arousal and situational attributions

Deontic Justice and Organizational Neuroscience

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