Those who ignore the past are doomed…to be heartless: Lay historicist theory is associated with humane responses to the struggles and transgressions of others

Abstract

When one learns that current struggles or transgressions of an individual or group are rooted in an unfortunate history, one experiences compassion and reduced blame. Prior research has demonstrated this by having participants receive (or not) a concrete historicist narrative regarding the particular individual or group under consideration. Here, we take a different approach. We explore the possibility that everyday people show meaningful variation in a broad lay theory that we call lay historicism. Lay historicists believe that—as a general fact—people’s psychological characteristics and life outcomes are powerfully molded by their life histories. We present eight studies linking lay historicism to broad tendencies toward compassion and non-blaming. Collectively, Studies 1–5 suggest that lay historicism affects compassion and blame, respectively, via distinct mechanisms: (1) Lay historicism is associated with compassion because it creates a sense that—as a general fact—past suffering lies behind present difficulties, and (2) lay historicism is associated with blame mitigation because historicists reject the idea that—as a general fact—people freely and autonomously create their moral character. Thus, lay historicism increases compassion and decreases blame via distinct mechanisms. The remaining studies diversify our evidence base. Study 6 examines criminal justice philosophies rather than broad moral traits (as in the earlier studies) and shows that lay historicism is associated with preference for humane criminal justice philosophies. Study 7 moves from abstract beliefs to concrete situations and shows that lay historicism predicts reduced blaming of an irresponsible peer who is encountered face-to-face. One additional study—in our Supplemental Materials—shows that lay historicism predicts lower levels of blaming on implicit measures, although only among those who also reject lay controllability theories. Overall, these studies provide consistent support for the possibility that lay historicism is broadly associated with humane responding to the struggles and transgressions of others.