Ideological Differences in Public Compassion: The Effects of Perspective Taking, Emotions, and Attributions on Willingness to Help

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Abstract Do people feel that the government should step in and help people who have suffered the consequences of a natural disaster, or do people feel that the government should stay out and let people cope on their own? What kinds of help should be provided and to whom? Considerable research indicates that the answers to these questions depend on the point of view of the perceiver. People make different attributions for why people need public assistance, even in the context of natural disasters. Some people tend to believe that most people's needs are the result of extenuating circumstances, a reaction that is associated with greater apparent sympathy and support for help. In contrast, others tend to believe that people's needs are consequences of what the needy have done or failed to do, reactions that are associated with less apparent sympathy and support for help. Neither standpoint may be called "right" or "wrong," for each is associated with widely accepted American values of a kind people balance in making political judgments. The goals of this research are to investigate the psychological mechanisms that lead to these views of the proper role for government, with a focus on the roles of (a) perspective taking, (b) affect, and (c) suppression. A national random sample of Americans will be asked to evaluate the proper role of Federal disaster assistance as a result of the 2004 Florida hurricanes. Study 1 will explore the effects of perspective taking (i.e., actively imagining being in another's shoes) on willingness to help victims of the hurricanes. Study 2 will explore whether participants' affective states (induced prior and unrelated to their evaluations of the hurricane victims) influence their attributions and affective reactions to claimants and consequently their willingness to help. Finally, Study 3 will explore whether asking people to suppress their blame cognitions increases their willingness to help that claimant, but produces a rebound effect when participants are asked to consider helping a new claimant. In addition to shedding insight into the psychological mechanisms that lead to ideological differences in willingness to support helping behavior, this research will allow us to test the relative malleability of helping orientations. We have found that it is relatively easy to make people who are favorable toward government assistance become less supportive (e.g., by increasing cognitive load, making resources scarce, or framing aid as serving secondary rather than primary needs). It is also relatively easy to make people who are unfavorable toward government assistance become more supportive (e.g., by asking people to perspective take, suppress responsibility judgments, or inducing them to feel more positive affect). In addition to advancing our understanding of the factors that influence public attitudes, the proposed research will also advance training of undergraduate and graduate students who will work on various aspects of the research and enhance the infrastructure for research by creating a number of rich data sets that students and others may be able to use to address additional questions of theoretical and practical importance.