On shifting the blame to humanity: Historicist narratives regarding transgressors evoke compassion for the transgressor but disdain for humanity.

Abstract

People respond compassionately to transgressors whose immorality is rooted in an unfortunate life history. But, are reactions to such historicist narratives uniformly compassionate? We suggest not. We propose that historicist narratives also have a dark side. Specifically, they encourage blame shifting, in which negative evaluations of humanity arise hand in hand with compassion for the focal transgressor of the narrative. Indeed, historicist narratives portray the focal transgressor as victimized by multiple others, who destroy her goodness and remove her chance to flourish in life. This destruction of another's potential is itself a profound moral violation and thus activates far-reaching blame responses that feed a disdainful view of humanity. In three studies, we provide evidence that historicist narratives evoke compassion for one but disdain for the multitude. We show that the resulting disdain can diminish prosocial behaviour in unrelated contexts, that it is elicited by both experimenter-provided and participant-generated historicist narratives, and that it is created via blame shifting. Our findings question the assumption that proliferation of historicist thinking would necessarily contribute to creating a more compassionate, humane society.