How Does the Source of Rejection Perceive Innocent Victims?

ABSTRACT

Prior studies have consistently revealed a strong positive association between general just-world beliefs and victim blaming. The present research aims to extend the literature by testing whether an act of social rejection overrides the influence of general just-world beliefs on victim blaming. Building upon the theory of moral compensation that people are more prosocial after behaving undesirably, we predicted that people should be less likely to blame an innocent victim after rejecting another person and that general just-world beliefs were not associated with victim blaming among the sources of rejection. To test these predictions, participants first completed a measure of general just-world beliefs and then recalled a past incident in which they rejected or accepted another person. They then read a scenario about school bullying and made attributions for the victim’s suffering. The results supported our predictions and the implications of the study are discussed.

Keywords:

• just-world beliefs
• rejection
• social exclusion
• sources of rejection
• victim blaming

Notes

1. In this article, we used social rejection to describe the experience of rejecting, excluding, ignoring, and ostracizing other person(s) in social interaction. Although prior studies have started to reveal that these constructs could lead to different outcomes (e.g., Bernstein & Claypool, 2012a, 2012b; Molden, Lucas, Gardner, Dean, & Knowles, 2009; see also Smart Richman & Leary, 2009 for a review), we did not intend to examine potential differences between them. For the sake of brevity, we treated social rejection, social exclusion, and ostracism as synonyms and used them interchangeably in this article.

2. The relationship type for the social rejection experience was coded. Participants in the rejecting condition reported that they had rejected their friends (16.3%), families (4.1%), classmates/colleagues (22.4%), romantic admirers/partners (26.5%), and strangers (10.2%). In all, 20.4% participants did not specify their targets of rejection or reported that they rejected targets that could not be classified in the above categories (e.g., roommate, personal trainer).

3. A 2 (experimental condition: rejecting vs. accepting) × 2 (gender: male vs. female) was conducted to examine whether gender interacted with the experimental condition in predicting victim blaming. The results revealed only a significant main effect of gender, such that female participants made fewer internal attributions for the victim’s suffering than male participants, F(1, 89) = 4.76, p = .032, η_p² = .05. The interaction effect was not statistically significant, F(1, 89) = 2.41, p = .118, η_p² = .03. The main effect of the experimental condition on victim blaming was approaching significant after controlling for the effect of gender, F(1, 90) = 3.51, p = .064, η_p² = .04. The main purpose of the present research was to examine whether the experimental manipulation would moderate the positive association between general just-world beliefs and victim blaming. Controlling for the effect of gender did not substantially alter our observed moderation effect. The present research did not aim to examine the potential impacts of gender and we did not have specific predictions about the role of gender. For the sake of brevity, we reported the main regression analysis without controlling for the effect of gender in the main text.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kai-Tak Poon

Kai-Tak Poon is affiliated with the Department of Psychological Studies and Centre for Psychosocial Health, Hong Kong Institute of Education.

Zhansheng Chen

Zhansheng Chen is affiliated with the Department of Psychology, University of Hong Kong.