Overstating harm : women are expected to feel more easily aggressed and harmed than men

Details

Supervisors

Yzerbyt, Vincent

Faculty

Faculté de psychologie, logopédie, sexologie et des sciences de la famille

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences psychologiques, à finalité approfondie

Abstract

In conflictual situations, whether latent or open conflict, it often happens that people overestimate the harm being done to them. In this research, we explored the concept of overstating harm (Shulman, 2016) and tested whether dominant groups tend to feel particularly aggressed and harmed when they are offended by a subordinate group (compared to the reverse situation or to same-position groups). We operationalized this hypothesis with gender, as men and women for dominant and dominated groups, respectively. Participants (N = 328, between-subjects) read a scenario describing an interaction at the workplace in which one person offended another one. Scenarios differed in the offender’s and victim’s genders across four conditions: (1) a man offended a man, (2) a woman offended a man, (3) a man offended a woman, (4) a woman offended a woman. Then, participants assessed to what extent the victim would feel aggressed and harmed, which emotions the victim would feel and evaluated the offender using the social judgement scale. Finally, participants completed the tendency for interpersonal victimhood scale (TIV; Gabay et al., 2020). Results failed to support our hypothesis. Indeed, participants considered that female protagonists would feel more aggressed (p = .03) and harmed (p = .02) than male protagonists, and the offender’s gender (as well as participant’s gender) did not influence this variable. Women and those who rated a female target considered that they would feel more negative emotions, and female offenders were judged more positively than male offenders. Finally, TIV predicted significantly scores of aggression, harm and negative emotions. We discuss a few possible explanations for these results and implications for future research. We suggest that the concept of overstating harm should be explored through other groups, and we emphasize its worth for understanding dominant group’s perception of unfairness sometimes leading to violent responses.