scholarly journals “They Did It”: The Effects of Emotionalized Blame Attribution in Populist Communication

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 870-900 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hameleers ◽  
Linda Bos ◽  
Claes H. de Vreese
Keyword(s):  
Political Attitudes ◽  
National Sample ◽  
Blame Attribution ◽  
Blame Attributions

How can we explain the persuasiveness of populist messages, and who are most susceptible to their effects? These questions remain largely unanswered in extant research. This study argues that populist messages are characterized by assigning blame to elites in an emotionalized way. As previous research pointed at the guiding influence of blame attributions and emotions on political attitudes, these message characteristics may explain populism’s persuasiveness. An experiment using a national sample ( N = 721) was conducted to provide insights into the effects of and mechanisms underlying populist blame attribution with regard to the European and national levels of governance. The results show that emotionalized blame attributions influence both blame perceptions and populist attitudes. Identity attachment moderates these effects: Emotionalized blame attributions have the strongest effects for citizens with weaker identity attachments. These insights allow us to understand how populist messages affect which citizens.

scholarly journals Experienced Adversity in Life Is Associated With Polarized and Affirmed Political Attitudes

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 652-659 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Randles ◽  
Steven J. Heine ◽  
Michael Poulin ◽  
Roxane Cohen Silver
Keyword(s):  
Life Events ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
Secondary Analysis ◽  
National Sample ◽  
Adverse Life Events ◽  
Over Time

Many studies find that when made to feel uncertain, participants respond by affirming importantly held beliefs. However, while theories argue that these effects should persist over time for highly disruptive experiences, almost no research has been performed outside the lab. We conducted a secondary analysis of data from a national sample of U.S. adults ( N = 1,613) who were followed longitudinally for 3 years. Participants reported lifetime and recent adversities experienced annually, as well as their opinions on a number of questions related to intergroup hostility and aggression toward out-groups, similar to those used in many lab studies of uncertainty. We anticipated that those who had experienced adversity would show more extreme support for their position. There was a positive relationship between adversity and the tendency to strongly affirm and polarize their positions. Results suggest that adverse life events may lead to long-lasting changes in one’s tendency to polarize one’s political attitudes.

Ethnic Identity and Bilingualism Attitudes

1987 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aida Hurtado ◽  
Patricia Gurin
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
National Sample ◽  
Mexican Descent ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Political Consciousness ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Structural Integration ◽  
Environment Influence

Attitudes toward bilingualism among a national sample of persons of Mexican descent are cast in a set of social psychological forces in which structural integration and childhood linguistic environment influence ethnic identity, which in turn influences bilingualism attitudes through its impact on political consciousness. Support is provided by evidence that ethnic identity, specifically a politically-framed conception of self as Chicana/Chicano and as part of la raza, fosters positive views of bilingualism both directly and indirectly through political consciousness. Ethnic identity also influences bilingualism attitudes through a different and contradictory path. Traditional self-conceptions as Mexican and Spanish-speaking directly encourage support of bilingualism but, at the same time, engage conservative political attitudes that discourage it.

scholarly journals Self-blame Attributions of Patients: a Systematic Review Study

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yadollah Jannati ◽  
Hamid Sharif Nia ◽  
Erika Sivarajan Froelicher ◽  
Amir Hossein Goudarzian ◽  
Ameneh Yaghoobzadeh
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Anxiety And Depression ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Blame Attribution ◽  
Self Blame ◽  
Blame Attributions ◽  
Mesh Terms ◽  
Review Study ◽  
Cross Sectional Design ◽  
Psychological Concern

Introduction: Psychological aspects are important issues in patients that will have significant effects on disease progression. A new and important psychological concern is self-blame. This review was performed with the aim of systematic review on studies around patient’s self-blame.Methods: This is a systematic review using international databases including PubMed (since 1950), Scopus (since 2004), Web of Sciences (since 1900), and ProQuest (since 1938) and Iranian databases including SID (since 2004) and Magiran (since 2001). Mesh terms including “patient,” “regret,” and “guilt” and non-Mesh terms including “self-blame attribution,” “characterological self-blame,” “behavioral self-blame,” and “blame” were used in Iranian and international databases with OR and AND operators.Results: The review yielded 59 articles; 15 articles were included in the present study. The ages of patients ranged from 29-68.4 years. Most of studies (86.6%) had cross-sectional design and use characterological self-blame and behavioral self-blame variables for assessing self-blame attributions. The results showed that in most studies, a significant relationship among self-blame and psychological distress, anxiety, and depression were reported.Conclusion: A significant relation was reported between self-blaming and the degree of distress, anxiety, and depression in patients in most of the studies.

scholarly journals Partisan Bias in Blame Attribution: When Does it Occur?

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 144-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Healy ◽  
Alexander G. Kuo ◽  
Neil Malhotra
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Design ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Government Performance ◽  
Representative Survey ◽  
Partisan Bias ◽  
Government Failure ◽  
Blame Attribution ◽  
Blame Attributions ◽  
Real World Setting ◽  
Nationally Representative

AbstractHow do citizens attribute blame in the wake of government failure? Does partisanship bias these attributions? While partisan cues may serve as useful guides when citizens are evaluating public policies, those cues are likely to be less informative and more distortionary when evaluating government performance regarding a crisis. We address these questions by examining blame attributions to government appointees for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. We implement an experimental design in a nationally representative survey that builds on previous work in two ways: (1) we manipulate party labels for the same officials in a real-world setting by considering appointees who were nominated at different times by presidents of different parties; and (2) we examine how domain relevance moderates partisan bias. We find that partisan bias in attributions is strongest when officials are domain relevant, a finding that has troubling implications for representative democracy.

Employee revenge against uncivil customers

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 636-649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akanksha Bedi ◽  
Aaron C.H. Schat
Keyword(s):  
Customer Service ◽  
Critical Incident ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Service Employees ◽  
Service Employee ◽  
Blame Attribution ◽  
Blame Attributions ◽  
Attributions Of Blame ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose This study aims to examine the relations between service employee blame attributions in response to customer incivility and revenge desires and revenge behavior toward customers, and whether employee empathy moderated these relations. Design/methodology/approach The authors used survey data based on the critical incident method provided by a sample of 431 customer service employees. Findings The results suggested that blaming a customer was positively associated with desire for revenge and revenge behaviors against the uncivil customer. In addition, the authors found that blame was less strongly associated with desire for revenge when employees empathized with customers. Finally, the results show that an employee who desired revenge against the uncivil customer and who empathized with the customer was more – not less – likely to engage in revenge. Practical implications The authors found that when employees experience mistreatment from customers, it increases the likelihood that they will blame the offending customer and behave in ways that are contrary to their organization’s interests. The results suggest several points of intervention for organizations to more effectively respond to customer mistreatment. Originality/value In this study, the authors make one of the first attempts to investigate the relationships between service employee attributions of blame when they experience customer incivility, desire for revenge and customer-directed revenge behaviors. The authors also examined whether empathy moderates the relations between blame attribution, desires for revenge and revenge behavior.

Perceptions of Group Versus Individual Service Failures and Their Effects on Customer Outcomes

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arne K. Albrecht ◽  
Gianfranco Walsh ◽  
Sharon E. Beatty
Keyword(s):  
Service Provider ◽  
Service Failure ◽  
Group Versus ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Blame Attribution ◽  
Service Failures ◽  
Blame Attributions ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Managerial Implications ◽  
Individual Service

A service failure and its negative effects can involve multiple customers at the same time, which suggests the need to understand the psychological mechanisms that underlie differential perceptions of group service failures (GSFs) versus individual service failures (ISFs) as well as their related outcomes. With an attributional framework, this article reports on two experiments that varied in their blame-attribution ambiguity. The results reveal that customers experience greater anger and show higher negative word-of-mouth and complaint intentions after a GSF versus an ISF. These differential effects are mediated by blame attributions, such that GSFs cause customers to blame the service provider more than ISFs. Customer entitlement also moderates the effect of the failure context (GSF vs. ISF) on blame attribution, contingent on perceptions of whether the service provider or customer violated an existing rule. Thus, we find that customers respond differently to service failures depending on the context. Managerial implications include separating customers from each other when GSFs are likely to take place, using techniques to redirect customer’s blame attributions to sources other than the service provider after a GSF and using customer scripts to minimize the occurrence of customer-induced service failures.

scholarly journals Shoot the messenger? The media’s role in framing populist attributions of blame

Journalism ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (9) ◽  
pp. 1145-1164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hameleers ◽  
Linda Bos ◽  
Claes H de Vreese
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Latent Class Analysis ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Latent Class ◽  
Class Analysis ◽  
Blame Attribution ◽  
Blame Attributions ◽  
The Media ◽  
Attributions Of Blame ◽  
Political Opinions

Attributing blame to elites is central to populist communication. Although empirical research has provided initial insights into the effects of populist blame attribution on citizens’ political opinions, little is known about the contextual factors surrounding its presence in the media. Advancing this knowledge, this article draws on an extensive content analysis ( N = 867) covering non-election and election periods to provide insights into how populist blame attributions are embedded in journalistic reporting styles. Using Latent Class Analysis, we first identified three distinct styles of reporting: neutral, conflict, and interpretative coverage. In line with our predictions, we find that populist blame attributions are present most in conjunction with an interpretative journalistic style and least when a neutral journalistic style is used. Populist blame attributions are more likely to be used by journalists of tabloid newspapers than journalists of broadsheet newspapers. These results provide valuable insights for understanding the intersections between journalism and populist communication.

scholarly journals Investigating the foreign language effect as a mitigating influence on the ‘optimality bias’ in moral judgements

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Bodig ◽  
Wilhelmiina Toivo ◽  
Christoph Scheepers
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Target Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Sufficient Information ◽  
Emotional Involvement ◽  
Blame Attribution ◽  
Blame Attributions ◽  
L1 English ◽  
Special Case

AbstractBilinguals often display reduced emotional resonance their second language (L2) and therefore tend to be less prone to decision-making biases in their L2 (e.g., Costa et al. in Cognition 130(2):236–254, 2014a, PLoS One 9(4):1–7, 2014b)—a phenomenon coined Foreign Language Effect (FLE). The present pre-registered experiments investigated whether FLE can mitigate a special case of cognitive bias, called optimality bias, which occurs when observers erroneously blame actors for making “suboptimal” choices, even when there was not sufficient information available for the actor to identify the best choice (De Freitas and Johnson in J Exp Soc Psychol 79:149–163, 2018. 10.1016/j.jesp.2018.07.011). In Experiment 1, L1 English speakers (N = 63) were compared to L2 English speakers from various L1 backgrounds (N = 56). In Experiment 2, we compared Finnish bilinguals completing the study in either Finnish (L1, N = 103) or English (L2, N = 108). Participants read a vignette describing the same tragic outcome resulting from either an optimal or suboptimal choice made by a hypothetical actor with insufficient knowledge. Their blame attributions were measured using a 4-item scale. A strong optimality bias was observed; participants assigned significantly more blame in the suboptimal choice conditions, despite being told that the actor did not know which choice was best. However, no clear interaction with language was found. In Experiment 1, bilinguals gave reliably higher blame scores than natives. In Experiment 2, no clear influence of target language was found, but the results suggested that the FLE is actually more detrimental than helpful in the domain of blame attribution. Future research should investigate the benefits of emotional involvement in blame attribution, including factors such as empathy and perspective-taking.

scholarly journals Corporate Social Responsibility Beyond Borders: U.S. Consumer Boycotts of a Global Company Over Sweatshop Issues in Supplier Factories Overseas

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (12) ◽  
pp. 1643-1664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joon Soo Lim ◽  
Kyujin Shim
Keyword(s):  
Structural Equation ◽  
Equation Model ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Blame Attribution ◽  
Blame Attributions ◽  
Theoretical Mechanism ◽  
Consumer Boycotts ◽  
Corporate Social ◽  
Global Company

The current research examines the effects of individualizing moral foundations (i.e., fairness and care) on consumer boycotts against the U.S. company that is entangled in an alleged sweatshop issue at a supplier’s factory in a developing country. On the basis of moral foundations theory, the current study tests six hypotheses that demonstrate the theoretical mechanism by which individualizing moral foundations have an impact on consumer boycott intentions through blame attributions and anger. Using a representative U.S. sample of 1,124 people, a national survey was conducted to test the proposed structural equation model. As predicted, results of mediation analysis showed that individualizing foundations, consisted of the fairness/care values, led to boycott intentions fully mediated by blame attribution and anger.

scholarly journals The EU Multi-Level System and the Europeanization of Domestic Blame Games

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Heinkelmann-Wild ◽  
Lisa Kriegmair ◽  
Berthold Rittberger
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Control Policy ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Blame Attribution ◽  
Blame Attributions ◽  
Eu Integration ◽  
Governance Systems ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Opposition Parties

Blame games between governing and opposition parties are a characteristic feature of domestic politics. In the EU, policymaking authority is shared among multiple actors across different levels of governance. How does EU integration affect the dynamics of domestic blame games? Drawing on the literatures on EU politicisation and blame attribution in multi-level governance systems, we derive expectations about the direction and frequency of blame attributions in a Europeanized setting. We argue, first, that differences in the direction and frequency of blame attributions by governing and opposition parties are shaped by their diverging baseline preferences as blame avoiders and blame generators; secondly, we posit that differences in blame attributions across Europeanized policies are shaped by variation in political authority structures, which incentivize certain attributions while constraining others. We hypothesize, inter alia, that blame games are “Europeanized” primarily by governing parties and when policy-implementing authority rests with EU-level actors. We test our theoretical expectations by analysing parliamentary debates on EU asylum system policy and EU border control policy in Austria and Germany.

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