Empathy, Social Dominance Orientation, Mortality Salience, and Perceptions of a Criminal Defendant

In two studies, participants completed measures of trait empathyand social dominance orientation, read a summary of a hit and run trial, and providedreactions to the case. In Study 1, the three randomly assigned conditions included aprompt to empathize with the victims, the empathy prompt with a mortality saliencemanipulation, and a control condition. Participants high in trait empathy were harsherin their judgments of the defendant than were low empathy participants, particularlyafter having read the mortality salience prompt. The results indicated that mortalitysalience had triggered personality differences. Participants high in social dominanceassigned harsher sentences across conditions. Study 2 involved the same paradigm, butthe prompts were presented on behalf of the defendant. Despite the pro-defendant slant,the pattern of results was similar to Study 1. Differences by trait empathy were moreapparent among participants experiencing mortality salience, and social dominance wasrelated to sentence choices. There were no indications in either study of mortalitysalience increasing bias against defendants in general or increasing racialbias