Reactions to victims under conditions of situational detachment: The effect of responsibility, severity, and expected future interaction.

Abstract

The research of Learner and others suggests that people tend to derogate innocent victims. A crucial assumption underlying Lerner's approach is that observers, unable to ascribe some misdeed to a victim, will attempt to convince themselves that the victim deserved his suffering by attributing personal unworthiness to him. The analysis developed in the present study, however, suggests certain circumstances under which innocent victims would not be devalued by strangers. The experimental design holds constant the observer's situational removal from the victim's misfortune and thereby facilitates a separation and assessment of factors that have been interlocked in previous research. Subjects learn about the victim's problem through examination of a clinical data folder; they either do, or do not, expect to meet the victim at a subsequent experimental session. The victim is portrayed as either innocent or responsible for her misfortune, and her suffering is described as either severe or mild. Consistent with predictions, innocent victims were not derogated vis-a-vis responsible ones; victims of severe suffering were evaluated less favorably than those of mild misfortune; and subjects who expected to meet the victim rated her more favorably than those who did not anticipate future interaction with her. According to Lerner's just-outcome hypothesis, people need to believe that they live in an orderly, fair world where one's outcomes are determined by one's behavior and personal merit. In service of this need, people interpret the events in the lives of others so as to maintain the belief that individuals get what they