Self-Related Factors Explaining Double Standards in Assessing Emotional Costs of Victims Suffering from Severe and Triflng Offenses

Monika Maria Dubas-Miciuk, Łukasz Roland Miciuk

Abstract


The role of emotions in moral behaviors is emphasized by many neuroscientists and philosophers. From psychological point of view, solving moral dilemmas is impossible in isolation from cognitive-emotional processes related to the self. This study aimed to test self-related factors explaining discrepancies in the judgement of hostility and sadness experienced by someone else’s victim and the judge’s own victim, suffering from severe and trifling offences. The research was conducted in both experimental and correlational paradigms, with response surface analysis (RSA) as a key method of data analysis. Total number of participants was 171. The following questionnaires were used: The Self-Motive Items (SMI), Self-Esteem Scale (SES), Ten Items Personality Inventory (TIPI-PL) and The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule – Expanded Form. According to the results, self-esteem is a predictor of (in)congruence of the levels of hostility attributed to victims suffering from severe offenses, while the motives of self-enhancement and self-assessment predict particular patterns of (mis)matches in the levels of hostility attributed to victims suffering from trifling offenses. Discussion of the findings deals, inter alia, with the role of self-perspective in effective recognition of other people's emotional states.


Keywords


hostility; victim; self-enhancement; self-esteem; response surface analysis

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/j.2020.33.3.105-122
Date of publication: 2020-10-31 02:04:04
Date of submission: 2020-06-02 21:30:31


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