Is observers’ preference for perspective taking moderated by targets’ membership in low competence low warmth groups ?
(2023) 19th General Meeting of the European Association of Social Psychology — Location: Krakow (Poland) (2023)
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- (en) In the Stereotype Content Model (Abele et al., 2021), groups belonging in the low competence low warmth (LCLW) quadrant are dehumanized, and do not activate the brain areas related to social cognition (Harris & Fiske, 2009, 2011). These findings suggest that when faced with such outgroup members, observers’ perspective taking might be negatively impacted. Recent work on perspective taking (Cameron et al., 2019) showed that in the absence of a clear reward, observers prefer engaging in an objective task (describing the facial expression of targets) rather than in a perspective taking (PT) task (trying to feel what targets feel) and perceive the PT task as comparatively more effortful and aversive. These results highlight that one key aspect to PT is observers’ motivation to adopt targets’ perspectives. While past research clearly shows that LCLW group members tend to be dehumanized, the question remains as to whether this dehumanization would also have an impact on observers’ motivation to adopt the perspective of such LCLW targets. Across two studies (N = 130, based on power analyses), we adapted the Empathy Selection Task (Cameron et al., 2019) so that targets would either be members of LCLW groups or HCLW (Study 1)/HCHW (Study 2) groups. We replicated previous findings showing a preference for the objective task, but did not find evidence that this effect was moderated by social groups. Future directions are discussed.
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Vanbeneden, A., Woltin, K.-A., & Yzerbyt, V. (2023). Is observers’ preference for perspective taking moderated by targets’ membership in low competence low warmth groups ? 19th General Meeting of the European Association of Social Psychology, Krakow (Poland). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/277091