ABSTRACT

Upon learning of the story of Cinderella, most people spontaneously adopt the emotional perspective of this helpless young woman rather than of her older sisters who oppress her. The present research examines whether this pattern reveals a general human tendency to empathise more with the emotions of individuals with low (versus high) power. Six experiments (N = 878) examined how power influences the focus of people’s emotional attributions. Participants were presented with situations in which one character exercised power over another one and had to resolve a referential ambiguity by considering the perspective of one or the other character. Results show that participants largely privileged the emotional states of the low-power character over those of the high-power character. This effect was observed with different types of stimuli (comics and video clips), with high- and low-power roles attributed to pairs of different genders (Experiments 1–4) or same gender (Experiments 5–6). Finally, the tendency persisted – though it was reduced – when participants adopted a less passive role with respect to the characters (Experiment 3) and when power occurred in a less despotic way (Experiment 6). Results are discussed with respect to social attention and sensitivity to fairness.

摘要

得知灰姑娘的故事后，大多数人不由自主地接受了这个无助的年轻女子的情感视角，而不是她那些压迫她的姐姐们。目前的研究调查了这种模式是否揭示了一种普遍的人类倾向，即对低（相对于高）权力的人的情绪更加同情。六个实验（N = 878) 研究了权力如何影响人们情感归因的焦点。参与者面临这样的情况，其中一个角色对另一个角色行使权力，并且必须通过考虑一个或另一个角色的观点来解决指称歧义。结果表明，参与者在很大程度上优先考虑低权力角色的情绪状态，而不是高权力角色的情感状态。这种效果在不同类型的刺激（漫画和视频剪辑）中观察到，高功率和低功率角色归因于不同性别（实验 1-4）或相同性别（实验 5-6）。最后，当参与者对角色采取不那么被动的角色（实验 3）以及权力以不那么专制的方式出现时（实验 6），这种趋势仍然存在——尽管它有所减少。