University of Twente Student Theses
About taking the perspective of an offender : how self-reflection and group-membership influence people's perspective taking of an offender
Steinbrecher, M. (2014) About taking the perspective of an offender : how self-reflection and group-membership influence people's perspective taking of an offender.
|
PDF
240kB |
| Abstract: | In this study, there was at first tried to replicate an earlier study. With respect to this, it was expected that people who were primed on own good actions were more likely to take the perspective of an in-group offender and that people who were primed on own bad actions were more likely to take the perspective of an out-group offender. It was tested what possible explanations could be for these differences in perspective taking. The design was a 2 (good actions versus bad actions of the participants respectively) x 3 (in-group offender versus out-group offender versus neutral offender) between-groups design. The three possible explanations for these findings which were tested were the threat to the self-esteem (people's self-esteem would be threatened when they had to think about own bad actions and not threatened when they had to think about own good actions); the motivation to behave unprejudiced (people would show a higher motivation when confronted with an out-group offender compared to when confronted with an in-group offender) and the use of heuristics (the degree of seriousness of the crime and the estimation of its frequency). The hypotheses were that the findings regarding perspective taking would be replicated, that the threat to self-esteem would be influenced by the conditions and that this threat would explain the differences in perspective taking. Yet, the findings of the earlier study could not be replicated (i.e. the interaction effect concerning perspective taking did not occur). Results show that people remained more aloof when they were primed with own good actions and that they were more motivated to behave unprejudiced when they were confronted with an out-group offender. Therefore, the hypotheses cannot be confirmed and further research is necessary in order to assess the influence of the motivation to behave unprejudiced on the degree of perspective taking. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 77 psychology |
| Programme: | Psychology BSc (56604) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/65803 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
Show download statistics for this publication
Show download statistics for this publicationRepository Staff Only: item control page