1. Perspective-Taking Does Not Reduce Victim Blaming in Work-Related Situations.
- Author
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Houdek, Petr, Bahník, Štěpán, Vrbová, Lucie, and Hájek, Jiří
- Abstract
According to the just-world theory, people tend to blame innocent victims for the misfortune they experienced to preserve the belief in a just world. Our preregistered experimental study (
N = 404; a university participants pool) employed work-related scenarios to test the possibility of reducing victim-blaming by taking a victim’s perspective. We also explored whether “victim-blaming” occurs for both undeserved negative and positive outcomes, i.e. attributions of blame or virtue in scenarios including demotions, dismissals, public reprimands, and removal of responsibilities as negative outcomes; and bonuses, promotions, salary raises, and job hirings as positive outcomes. We found that victim-blaming followed from the just-world belief only in scenarios where an individual gains unjust benefit. The belief in a just world could thus lead to the misattribution of positive work outcomes and could result in biased human resources management. Taking the victim’s perspective did not reduce attributions of blame and virtue. However, participants considered the outcomes more deserved when they took the perpetrator’s perspective. This finding may be a warning that if a perpetrator’s perception framework is more accessible for assessing a particular situation, the victims will be blamed more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]- Published
- 2024
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