Harmful Attributions: The Role of Mind Perception

Abstract

Introduction: Drawing from literature in social and clinical psychology, we explore mechanisms associated with the lack of empathy for people who engage in self-injurious behaviors. Methods: Using implicit and explicit measures across three samples, we tested whether knowledge of prior self-injury impacts observers' empathy, perceived agency, perspective taking, and willingness to help a target individual. Results: We found in Studies 1-2 that observers report decreased empathy, perceive less agency, and make more dispositional attributions toward a person who engages in deliberate self-injury, compared to accidental injury. Study 3 indicates that observers perceive a target who engaged in deliberate self-injury to have lower agency. Furthermore, when evaluating a target who has been victimized, observers report less empathy, compassion, and likelihood of helping if the target has a history of deliberate self-injury. Perceived agency accounted for decreased empathy, whereas empathy accounted for lower likelihood of helping. Discussion: Our findings imply that observers may be better able to empathize with people with a history of self-injury if they focus on the agency of the indi-vidual and situational causal explanations for the behavior.