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Full-Text Articles in Psychology

Blame The Shepherd Not The Sheep: Imitating Higher-Ranking Transgressors Mitigates Punishment For Unethical Behavior, Christopher W. Bauman, Leigh Plunkett Tost, Ong, Madeline Nov 2016

Blame The Shepherd Not The Sheep: Imitating Higher-Ranking Transgressors Mitigates Punishment For Unethical Behavior, Christopher W. Bauman, Leigh Plunkett Tost, Ong, Madeline

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Do bad role models exonerate others’ unethical behavior? Based on social learning theory and psychologicaltheories of blame, we predicted that unethical behavior by higher-ranking individuals changes howpeople respond to lower-ranking individuals who subsequently commit the same transgression. Fivestudies explored when and why this rank-dependent imitation effect occurs. Across all five studies, wefound that people were less punitive when low-ranking transgressors imitated high-ranking membersof their organization. However, imitation only reduced punishment when the two transgressors werefrom the same organization (Study 2), when the transgressions were highly similar (Study 3), and whenit was unclear whether the initial transgressor was punished (Study 5). …


Interconnections Between Perceptions Of Blame, Mind, And Moral Abilities, Alex Ropes, Steve Guglielmo May 2016

Interconnections Between Perceptions Of Blame, Mind, And Moral Abilities, Alex Ropes, Steve Guglielmo

Psychology Honors Projects

Theories of blame, mind, and moral attribution consider an individual’s perceived agency, operationalized in part as perceived intentionality and self-control. People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may display social deficits and a greater tendency to engage in problem behavior (PB; American Psychiatric Association, 2013) than neurotypical (NT) people, which may lead people to perceive that individuals with ASD act less agentically. Study 1 shows that the mitigated perceived agency of people with ASD leads to mitigated blame attribution. In addition to perceived agency, theories of mind and moral attribution account for perceptions of an individual’s capacity to experience emotions, pleasure, …