Can priming your self lead to punishing others?
Previous research has shown that priming the individual self can increase the accessibility of individual self-cognitions. In turn, we hypothesized that blame for immoral behaviors also would increase, leading to higher assignments of punishment, but that the size of this effect would depend on whether the behaviors violated perfect or imperfect duties. To test these hypotheses, participants assigned yearly bonus penalties to employees who had performed dishonest, disloyal, unfriendly, or uncharitable acts. As expected, the individual prime increased punishments, and this effect was accentuated for violations of perfect duties relative to violations of imperfect duties.
Department of Psychology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001, USA. sandry@nmsu.edu
Joshua
J
Sandry
Gayle
G
Hunt
Stephen
S
Rice
David
D
Trafimow
Kasha
K
Geels
D000293:Adolescent; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D011678:Punishment; D012649:Self Concept; D012933:Social Identification; D012938:Social Perception; D012941:Social Responsibility; D055815:Young Adult