Empathy influences the interpretation of whether others have violated everyday indeterminate rules.

Abstract

Objective: People encounter institutional rules in many settings of their lives-from schools to workplaces, from commercial places to public spaces. Often these everyday rules are indeterminate, requiring people who apply them to use their own discretion. Psychological processes help explain how lay people decide whether others have violated these everyday rules. Hypothesis: We predicted that when lay people empathize with others, they are less likely to decide that the people they empathize with violated everyday indeterminate rules. Method: We performed two correlational studies (Studies 1 and 2) and two experiments (Studies 3 and 4) using MTurk. We asked participants to read 3 dilemmas involving indeterminate institutional rules (Studies 1-3) or one dilemma (Study 4) and decide whether people violated such rules. Results: Greater empathy for people in these dilemmas was associated with a lower likelihood of deciding that rules were violated-even when controlling for the perceived harmfulness of the infraction-regardless of whether empathy was independently rated in explanations provided by lay people about their decisions (Study 1; N = 725; 51% female; 76.8% White), measured in the form of self-reported empathic concern and inclusion-of-self-in-other (Study 2; N = 1,159; 58% female; 78.9% White), or manipulated based upon whether a person transgressed a rule for selfish versus altruistic reasons (Studies 3; N = 1,073; 53% female; 77.7% White). Moreover, when we manipulated both empathy (selfish vs. altruistic transgression) and rule indeterminacy by altering whether the rule was silent about potential exceptions (indeterminate rule) versus absolutely rejected all exceptions (determinate rule), the likelihood of deciding a rule was violated was lowest when the rule was indeterminate and transgressed for altruistic reasons (Study 4; N = 239; 42% female; 77.0% White). Conclusions: Overall, results reveal a robust effect of empathy on how lay people resolve rule indeterminacy in everyday life, which may foster or frustrate law and public policy, and has implications for the resilience of institutions. Public Significance StatementFour studies suggest that empathy for people who transgress everyday institutional rules may promote institutional change and resilience. By understanding how lay people interpret these everyday indeterminate rules, researchers and experts may better understand and predict how people and institutions will administer rules in unexpected or changing circumstances, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and volatile social environments.

Evaluator empathy in risk assessment interviews.

“…They also reported being more confident in their ability to know if the evaluee was being deceitful (Vera et al, 2019). These findings—though never before empirically studied in forensic evaluation—are generally consistent with the broader literature on empathy and decision making, in which greater empathy for others has been associated with a lower likelihood of believing that those same others have violated institutional rules in ambiguous situations (LaCosse & Quintanilla, 2021). In other words, the findings suggest that high levels of empathy from evaluators could leave them less skeptical and more likely to give evaluees the benefit of the doubt regarding ambiguous events or behaviors, leading to more favorable evaluator opinions.…”

Moral appraisals guide intuitive legal determinations.

“…Numerous studies now confirm that this tendency is not confined to judicial contexts: Laypeople’s judgments of whether a rule has been violated are routinely influenced by elements beyond the rule’s literal meaning. This effect has been demonstrated in the context of household and institutional rules (Bregant et al, 2019; LaCosse & Quintanilla, 2021; Struchiner et al, 2020), minor legal rules (Garcia et al, 2014; Turri, 2019; Turri & Blouw, 2015), and criminal laws (Kahan, 2010; Peter-Hagene & Bottoms, 2017; Peter-Hagene & Ratliff, 2021).…”

“…In the legal sphere, correlational evidence lends credence to the moralist hypothesis that moral appraisals are implicated in legal decision-making. Attitudes of moral condemnation have been found to predict mock trial verdicts (Salerno & Peter-Hagene, 2013;Skorinko et al, 2014) and the application of everyday rules (LaCosse & Quintanilla, 2021).…”

“…In the legal sphere, correlational evidence lends credence to the moralist hypothesis that moral appraisals are implicated in legal decision-making. Attitudes of moral condemnation have been found to predict mock trial verdicts (Salerno & Peter-Hagene, 2013; Skorinko et al, 2014) and the application of everyday rules (LaCosse & Quintanilla, 2021). For instance, whether people view an agent’s behavior as having violated an applicable rule correlates strongly with their judgments of whether that same behavior is morally blameworthy (Struchiner et al, 2020).…”

“…Our focus was on the manipulation of the moral valence of the rule’s purpose, yet participants may have justifiably inferred differences in the agent’s moral character across conditions as well. Thus, whether counter-literal judgments were driven solely by moral evaluations of the rule’s purpose (as suggested by Hart & Sacks, 1994) or by a more comprehensive appraisal of the incident (as observed by LaCosse & Quintanilla, 2021; Wylie & Gantman, 2023) remains unclear. To shed light on the question, in Study 2, we held the purposes’ moral valence constant, describing a benevolent rule in every case, and extraneously manipulated the protagonist’s moral blameworthiness.…”