Dawtry_et_al_2020.docx (288.09 kB)
Victims, Vignettes, and Videos: Meta-Analytic and Experimental Evidence that Emotional Impact Enhances the Derogation of Innocent Victims
journal contribution
posted on 2023-08-30, 16:59 authored by Rael J. Dawtry, Mitchell J. Callan, Annelie J. Harvey, Ana I. GheorghiuResearch during the 1960s found that observers could be moved enough by an innocent victim’s suffering to derogate their character. However, recent research has produced inconsistent evidence for this effect. We conducted the first meta-analysis (k = 55) of the experimental literature on the victim derogation effect to test the hypothesis that it varies as a function of the emotional impactfulness of the context for observers. We found that studies which employed more impactful contexts (e.g., that were real and vivid) reported larger derogation effects. Emotional impact was, however, confounded by year of appearance, such that older studies reported larger effects and were more impactful. To disentangle the role of emotional impact, in two primary experiments we found that more impactful contexts increased the derogation of an innocent victim. Overall, the findings advance our theoretical understanding of the contexts in which observers are more likely to derogate an innocent victim.
History
Refereed
- Yes
Volume
24Issue number
3Page range
233-259Publication title
Personality and Social Psychology ReviewISSN
1532-7957External DOI
Publisher
SAGEFile version
- Accepted version
Language
- eng