Dawtry Rael J, Callan Mitchell J, Harvey Annelie J, Gheorghiu Ana I
University of Essex, Colchester, UK.
University of Bath, UK.
Pers Soc Psychol Rev. 2020 Aug;24(3):233-259. doi: 10.1177/1088868320914208. Epub 2020 Apr 22.
Research 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 ( = 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.
20世纪60年代的研究发现，无辜受害者的痛苦足以让观察者产生动摇，从而诋毁受害者的品格。然而，最近的研究对此效应得出了不一致的证据。我们对关于受害者诋毁效应的实验文献进行了首次元分析（=55），以检验该效应随观察者所处情境的情感影响力而变化的假设。我们发现，采用更具影响力情境（如真实且生动的情境）的研究报告了更大的诋毁效应。然而，情感影响力与研究发表年份存在混淆，即较早的研究报告的效应更大且更具影响力。为厘清情感影响力的作用，在两项主要实验中，我们发现更具影响力的情境会增加对无辜受害者的诋毁。总体而言，这些发现推进了我们对观察者更有可能诋毁无辜受害者的情境的理论理解。
