Making the Bad Seem Worse

It has often been speculated that disasters caused by intentional human actions are perceived as more harmful than natural disasters of the same magnitude. A new series of studies by social psychologists Daniel Ames and Susan Fiske confirms this expectation and suggests that the reason for this effect is our wish to blame the harm-doer. Specifically, they propose that when the harmful event is intentional, we build our case for punishing the perpetrator in part by exaggerating the seriousness of the outcome. (See this article for a general discussion of compensatory and retributive justice.)

For example, in one of the seven studies they report, participants read about a drought caused by a river that dried up. In the intentional harm condition, they were told that a man deliberately diverted the river, while in the unintentional condition, the problem was said to be due to lack of rain. The participants were then given a brief opportunity to look at a list of monetary damages caused by the disaster, i.e., value of crops lost, etc., and asked to estimate the total damages.

	Estimated Total Harm
Actual Damage	$2,862.00
Unintentional Harm	$2,753.00
Intentional Harm	$5,120.00

As you can see, those in the unintentional harm condition estimated the damages fairly accurately. However, participants in the intentional harm condition gave a mean estimate of harm that was almost twice the real damage. This difference persisted even when participants were given a monetary incentive for being accurate, and even when they were asked to give separate estimates of total harm and any punitive damages they might want to impose.

In some of their studies comparing accidental vs. intentional harms caused by the same perpetrator, Ames and Fiske measured blame motivation, a combination of desire to blame, morally condemn and punish the perpetrator. They found that the effect of intentionality on harm estimates was mediated by—that is, largely accounted for by—the motivation to blame the harm-doer. (See this previous post for an explanation of how researchers infer mediation.) Of course, it was not possible to do this analysis with the drought scenario, since no person was responsible for the lack of rain.

As with all good studies, this one raises more questions than it answers. The authors tentatively suggest that we may be overreacting to intentional acts such as the threat of terrorism, but neglecting other impersonal threats. I'm intrigued by the fact that the participants exaggerated the costs of intentional harms rather than underestimating the costs of unintentional ones. This suggests that we are more inclined to punish people who harm us deliberately than to forgive those who harm us unintentionally. (Actually, I'm combining the results of two separate studies to draw this conclusion, but it doesn't seem far-fetched.) If so, is this more characteristic of Americans than of other cultures? Of conservatives than of liberals?

In the real world, important events have multiple causes whose exact contributions are not clear. Most of us believe that Hurricane Katrina was not simply a natural disaster, but was caused in part by failure to adequately build and maintain the levees, by failure of FEMA to respond efficiently, etc. Presumably, those who believe that human negligence played a significant role will see Katrina as having been more harmful. How will society assign blame for current and future disasters attributable by climate change?

In disasters where human agency is clearly involved, i.e., the BP oil spill, there will almost certainly be conflicting accounts of who was responsible and whether the harm was deliberate or accidental. How does the public respond to these controversies and why? When safety precautions are disregarded, do they think the primary fault lies with the corporations who disregard the rules or the government regulators who fail to enforce them? What if these corporations contribute to politicians who in turn weaken the rules or ensure that regulatory agencies are understaffed?

There are enough questions here to keep social psychologists occupied for quite a while.

You may also be interested in reading:

Blaming the Victim

The Ultimate Attribution Error

Don't Drink and Vote

Occasionally research brings what seemed to be separate topics together in an interesting way. I've previously noted that one purpose of this blog is to encourage thinking slowly—deliberate, effortful processing of information—in the hope of responding rationally to difficult social and political problems. A recent article by Scott Eidelman and three colleagues suggests that the opposite of slow thought—rapid, low effort processing of information—encourages political conservatism. They present four studies to support this claim.

As most of us know, alcohol consumption interferes with deliberative thought while leaving automatic responding largely intact. The first study was done as people were leaving a bar. Participants were asked to answer some questions and exhale into a breathalyzer, which measured their blood alcohol level. The questions included a ten item measure of liberalism-conservatism, as well as whether they considered themselves a liberal or a conservative. Statistically controlling for gender, education and political ideology, the authors found that the higher the participants' blood alcohol level, the more they scored toward the conservative end of the scale. Both self-identified liberals and conservatives were more conservative when they were more intoxicated. (In case you're wondering, liberals and conservatives were equally likely to get drunk.)

The other three studies were laboratory experiments. In the second, students responded to another opinion scale which measured liberalism and conservatism independently of one another. Cognitive load was manipulated by requiring some participants to perform a secondary task (counting tones of different pitches) while filling out the questionnaire. The others merely filled out the scale. Distraction was expected to interfere with their ability to think about the opinion items. As predicted, the participants with the higher cognitive load scored higher in conservatism and lower in liberalism.

In a third study, participants rated the favorability of liberal and conservative concepts such as “civil rights” and “law and order.” Opportunity to think was manipulated by giving some participants only 1.5 seconds to respond to each item, while the others could take as long as they wanted. The high time pressure subjects rated the conservative terms more favorably. They also rated the liberal terms less favorably, but the difference was not statistically significant.

Finally, in the last study, participants rated the liberal and conservative concepts under instructions to think quickly or slowly. In the low effort condition, they were told to “give your first, immediate response to the terms” and to not “think too hard.” In the high effort condition, the instructions were to “think hard about each term,” to “take your time and give a careful and thoughtful response.” The task was followed by a pop quiz—a recognition memory test. Participants were shown many concepts and asked to identify the ones they had previously rated. The low effort participants rated the conservative terms more favorably than the high effort participants. (As before, the effect on liberal terms was not significant.) The recognition memory task served as a measure of depth of thought and, as predicted, it partially accounted for the relationship between low effort thinking and conservatism. (That is, if you statistically eliminate the effect of recognition memory scores, the relationship between low effort and conservatism is reduced, but still statistically significant.)

How do the authors explain these results? First of all, they are not saying that conservatives are less intelligent than liberals (although there is some evidence that this is the case). Both liberals and conservatives were affected by these manipulations. They are also not saying that conservative ideology is cognitively simpler than liberalism (althought there is quite a bit of evidence that this is true). In these studies, independent samples rated the complexity of the liberal and conservative statements and concepts to ensure that they were equally difficult to understand.

Here's their argument: There are three aspects of the content of conservative ideology, all of which we are more likely to believe when processing information automatically, but which we question when we engage in deliberate, effortful thought. They are:

• a tendency to see people as personally responsible for their outcomes, rather than acknowledging that their behavior could be situationally caused.
• an acceptance of heirarchy—inequality between people and groups (such as the rich and the poor).
• a preference for the status quo rather than social change.

Since there is evidence that these three bulwarks of conservative thought are more likely to occur when we are operating on automatic pilot, distracting people, forcing them to respond in a hurry, asking them not to think too hard, or getting them drunk all will make them more conservative. It appears that conservative thinking comes more easily to us. To avoid being reflexive right wingers, we have to put down the beer, turn off the TV, and think about it. That could be a sobering message.

Class Acts

The number of Americans living below the official poverty line is at its highest level in decades. On the other hand, our political leaders are drawn from those Americans who are highest in socioeconomic status. The average wealth of members of Congress is $13.2 million in the Senate and $5.9 million in the House. Eleven percent of Congress are in the top 1% of the income distribution. These Congresspeople are considering taking serious steps to dismantle the social safety net that is critical to the survival of an increasingly large number of poor Americans. What can social psychology tell us about differences in the attitudes of rich and poor Americans toward personal responsibility, and about differences in their willingness to help those in need or to deliberately hurt other people?

A recent series of experiments by social psychologists led by Dacher Keltner at the University of California at Berkeley have studied the psychology of social class. First, a word on how social class was measured. In some studies, it was measured objectively by asking participants to state their own (or their parents') income and educational attainment. Subjective social class was measured by asking participants to place an “X” on one of ten rungs of a ladder representing their status compared to others. Finally, in some studies, social class was manipulated by having participants to write an essay comparing their own life to that of either a rich or a poor American. Comparing yourself to the poor makes you feel richer, while comparing yourself to the rich makes you feel poorer. These different approaches produced generally consistent results.

Explanations of human behavior can be divided into personal causes (some characteristic of the behaving individual) or situational causes (some aspect of the social environment). How do the rich and the poor explain economic inequality? The Berkeley group hypothesized that since poor people have fewer resources, they exert less personal control over their own outcomes, and they see inequality as more a product of situational forces than the rich. Keltner and his colleagues called their participants' attention to inequality in this country by presenting statistical data. Participants were then asked to rate the importance of twelve explanations of inequality. Some of them were personal (talent, hard work) while others were situational (inheritance, discrimination). These studies also included a measure of personal control over one's own life.

As expected, upper class participants gave more personal explanations for wealth and poverty, and the relationship between social class and social explanation was mediated by feelings of personal control over one's own life. (See my earlier post on I. Q. and prejudice for an explanation of how mediational hypotheses are tested.) Subsequent studies showed that these tendencies to explain behavior as personally or situationally caused apply to other outcomes in addition to economic inequality. If members of economic and political elites believe they have earned their favorable position, and that poor people fail because they lack positive traits, will they be more willing to eliminate social programs that to help the poor?

Do upper and lower classes differ in helpfulness? The Berkeley group proposed that, because the poor depend more on other members of their community for help in times of crisis, they would be more sensitive to the needs of others, more compassionate, and more helpful. An alternative possibility is that because the poor have less, they will be more reluctant to give it away and will be less helpful. In one of their studies (called the “dictator game”), participants were given ten points (later to be exchanged for money) and allowed to split them however they chose between themselves and an anonymous partner. Lower class participants were more generous to their partners. In another study, people were asked how much of one's income a person ought to donate to charity. In this study, social class was both measured objectively and manipulated (by having them compare themselves to the rich or the poor). The results are shown in this chart.

The lines labeled lower and upper class rank refer to the manipulations of thinking about the rich or the poor respectively. High and low social class refer to their objective status (family income and education). Using both measures, the poor were more generous. This finding corresponds to real world studies which consistently show that poor people donate a higher percentage of their income to charity than rich people.

One study tested the hypothesis that the helpfulness of the poor is mediated by compassion. Compassion was manipulated by showing a short film about child poverty or a neutral film. Participants were later given an opportunity to help a fellow student in distress. When shown the neutral film, lower class participants were more helpful than upper class participants. When the compassion-inducing film was shown, there was no difference. The rich were capable of being helpful when reminded of the need to be compassionate. However, the poor appeared to be spontaneously helpful.

Might the upper class's lack of helpfulness also mean that they are more likely to behave unethically for selfish reasons? The Berkeley group did seven studies of social class differences in unethical behavior. When most Americans think about criminal behavior, they think of lower class street criminals whose behavior is heavily publicized by the media. However, the researchers expected the rich to endorse greed as a legitimate motive and behave more unethically than the poor. Two of the studies were observations of drivers. Wealth was measured by the monetary value of their car. Drivers of expensive cars were more likely to cut off other drivers at a four-way stop and to fail to yield the right of way to pedestrians—both illegal under California law.

In other studies, upper class participants took more candy which, if they hadn't taken it, would have been given to children; cheated more on a laboratory task in order to win a monetary prize; and reported greater willingness to lie, steal and behave unethically in hypothetical scenarios. Finally, the authors demonstrated that the unethical behavior of the rich was mediated by greed. Greed was manipulated by asking some participants to list three reasons why greed might be a good thing. Others completed a different list. They then filled out a measure of willingness to endorse unethical behaviors on the job, such as borrowing money from the cash register overnight. When greed was primed, lower class participants endorsed as much unethical behavior as wealthier participants. Without the greed prime, the usual social class differences were obtained.

These studies are impressive both in number and consistency. Obviously, none of these behaviors rise to the level of the recent financial crimes that have cost middle class Americans billions of dollars. But at the very least, they suggest that mass media stereotypes of the rich and the poor need adjustment. In my last post, I reported studies showing that the decisions made by our political leaders correspond most closely to the preferences of the rich. When the wealthiest Americans decide the future of the country during a long recession, they seem almost certain to increase inequality--a problem that has already gotten far out of hand.

Blaming the Victim

My two previous posts about the killing of Trayvon Martin focused on social influences on the perpetrator—the tendency of whites to assume that black people are a threat and the tendency to perceive others as threatening when you are carrying a gun. This one focuses on the attitudes of third parties. You have no doubt heard news reports suggesting Mr. Martin was a less-than-perfect person. When faced with inexplicable tragedy, there is a tendency to blame the victim—to hold the victim responsible for his own victimization.

Blaming the victim is supported by many studies. For example, Janoff-Bulman and her colleagues had participants read a detailed narrative about a young woman spending an evening out on the town. At the end of the night, a man escorts her home. In one version, he rapes her. In the other, nothing happens. Her behavior and personality are the same. In fact, the two stories were completely identical with the exception of the final sentence. The woman was blamed more by participants who read the rape outcome than those who read the neutral outcome. Behaviors that took on no particular significance in the neutral condition, such as mild flirting or wearing a short skirt, were seized on in hindsight by participants in the rape condition as evidence that she brought the rape on herself. Studies using this and other similar paradigms have found evidence of both behavioral blame (she engaged in risky actions) and characterological blame (she is a bad person). Needless to say, the most common strategy used by defense attorneys at trial is to attempt to persuade the jury to blame the victim.

In the Martin case, victim blaming is merged with our stereotypes of young black men. Instead of a short skirt, we are encouraged to think it's significant that Trayvon was wearing a hoodie. To associate him with drugs, it is leaked that marijuana residue was found among his possessions. And since young black men are supposed to be hostile, some news organizations were deceived by a photograph of a young man flipping the bird at the camera—which turned out a photo of someone else.

Blaming the victim is one of several examples of our belief in a just world. Fritz Heider, the founder of modern attribution theory, wrote that in order for our attitudes toward other people to be in balance, happiness and goodness ought to go together. In a just world, good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior is punished. Seeing one, we assume the other. It follows that if all we know about a person is that he has suffered some accident, illness or other misfortune, we assume that he is a bad person who deserved the negative outcome he received.

Why do we believe in a just world despite so much obvious evidence to the contrary? It is functional for the individual, since it facilitates the illusion that we can control our own fate. The alternative belief, that there is no relationship between our behavior and our outcomes, is known as learned helplessness, and people who believe that tend to be chronically depressed. At the societal level, the just world hypothesis serves as a mechanism of social control. If children can be taught to believe in a just world, they will presumably be encouraged to work hard, obey the law, treat others well, etc., in the expectation of leading a long and happy life.

The Ultimate Attribution Error

In his excellent blog, Glenn Greenwald made the following point about media coverage of the massacre of Afghan civilians by an American soldier:

Here's a summary of the Western media discussion of what motivated U. S. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales to allegedly kill 16 Afghans, including 9 children: he was drunk, he was experiencing financial stress, he was passed over for a promotion, he had a traumatic brain injury, he had marital problems, he suffered from the stresses of four tours of duty, he “saw his buddy's leg blown off the day before the massacre,” etc.

Here's a summary of the Western media discussion of what motivates Muslims to kill Americans: they are primitive, fanatically religious, hateful terrorists.

Greenwald also points out that when the media try to understand possible causes of the bad actions of American soldiers, we don't confuse them with excuses for their actions. But when anyone suggests that Afghans who commit crimes may be responding to the illegal and increasingly violent occupation of their country, they are immediately accused of attempting to justify or defend terrorism.

This illustrates what social psychologist Thomas Pettigrew called the ultimate attribution error. Attribution refers to the process of identifying the causes of events. Humans are known to make a number of systematic errors when assigning causality. The ultimate attribution error refers to a systematic bias in the way we analyze the behavior of ingroups vs. outgroups, or friends vs. enemies. Good and successful actions by ingroup members are attributed to their stable internal dispositions, such as ability or motivation. But our own and our friends' bad or unsuccessful behavior is seen as a temporary product of a difficult situation or environment.

When analyzing the behavior of an outgroup, especially a disliked one, this tendency is reversed. Their bad behavior is seen as a product of their evil nature, while their good behavior is a product of a temporary, favorable, external situation. (Think of the tendency of prejudiced whites to attribute black success to affirmative action.) Needless to say, any unfavorable stereotypes we have of outgroup members will be maintained by these attributions, even in the face of behavior that might appear to contradict them.

Greenwald's point reminded me of a pair of related studies by Michael Morris and Kaiping Peng. In the first, they analyzed newspaper accounts in the New York Times and the Chinese-language World Journal of two mass murders that occurred in the United States, one committed by a Chinese man and the other by an American man. Each unit, or clause, that gave an explanation for the crime was classified according to whether it referred to a permanent disposition of the actor or a temporary situational influence.

The Times article showed the ultimate attribution error. American reporters attributed more causality to situational factors when describing the American murderer than the Chinese murderer. On the other hand, more dispositional traits were attributed to the Chinese than to the American killer. The Chinese-language newspaper did not show this bias.

The second study was an experiment. Chinese and American participants were given an article about either the American or the Chinese murderer to read. The articles were balanced in that they referred to an equal number of personal and situational causes of the crime. Afterwards, the participants were asked to rate the importance of the personal and situational explanations mentioned to in the article. As predicted, the American participants gave more weight to dispositional factors when rating the Chinese than the American murderer, and more weight to situational factors when rating the American than the Chinese killer. The Chinese participants did not show this bias.

This is a relatively conservative test of the ultimate attribution error, since there was no particular reason to think the American participants were hostile to individual Chinese citizens. In this study, the Chinese are an outgroup rather than an enemy. You would expect the contrast to be greater when we are at war with the outgroup.

The study shows that the ultimate attribution error occurs both in our individual judgments and in the mass media, but it doesn't address the chicken vs. egg problem. Do the media influence our judgments, do they pander to what they know are our preferences, or both?

Finally, you'll notice that in this study the ultimate attribution error is uniquely characteristic of Americans. I hope to discuss how and why Americans' attributions differ from those of most of the rest of the world's people in a future post.