SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Department of Psychology in Wroclaw, Poland.
SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Department of Psychology in Wroclaw, Poland.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2023 Apr;234:103859. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2023.103859. Epub 2023 Feb 11.
Experiments on obedience to authority conducted under the paradigm developed by Milgram have demonstrated that empathy plays either no or a very limited role in determining participants' behaviors. This study proposes that this occurs due to participants empathizing with both "learners" and experimenters. Empathy with learners makes participants withdraw from the experiment, while empathy with experimenters makes them continue. Therefore, the more that participants are characterized by dispositional empathy, the more they are reluctant to hurt learners but, at the same time, the more they try not to disappoint experimenters. This study investigates the effects of empathy being situationally directed toward learners. After manipulating the alleged similarities between "teachers" and "learners" in terms of crucial attitudes and values, the degree to which teachers obeyed experimenters and were willing to electrocute learners was measured. The results confirm that situationally directed empathy reduces participants' obedience to experimenters.
权威服从实验是在米尔格拉姆所开发的范式下进行的，这些实验表明同理心在决定参与者行为方面要么没有作用，要么作用非常有限。本研究提出，这是由于参与者对“学习者”和实验者都产生了同理心。对学习者的同理心使参与者退出实验，而对实验者的同理心则使他们继续实验。因此，参与者的特质同理心越强，他们就越不愿意伤害学习者，但同时，他们也越努力不让实验者失望。本研究探讨了同理心针对学习者的情况导向的影响。在根据关键态度和价值观操纵“教师”和“学习者”之间的假定相似性之后，测量了教师对实验者的服从程度以及他们愿意对学习者进行电击的程度。结果证实，针对情况的同理心降低了参与者对实验者的服从程度。
