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Citizens of the world: National stereotypes do not affect empathic response in the presence of individuating information
Author(s) -
Sharifian MohammadHasan,
Hatami Javad,
Batouli Seyed Amir Hossein,
Boroujeni Mohammad Mahdi Fathian
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
international journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1464-066X
pISSN - 0020-7594
DOI - 10.1002/ijop.12807
Subject(s) - vignette , psychology , empathy , sadness , social psychology , stereotype (uml) , affect (linguistics) , competence (human resources) , developmental psychology , anger , communication
Stereotyping is defined as generalising an attribute to a whole group and overlooking individual differences. In this study, we investigated whether Iranians' stereotypes of nations affected their empathy for the citizens of those nations. First, in a pilot study we explored common national stereotypes by using the stereotype content model (SCM) based on which six countries with different perceived warmth and competence scores were selected as nationalities of the protagonists of the vignettes in our experiment. In the next phase, 21 participants were asked to rate the degree of sadness associated with each vignette in an fMRI scanner. The results showed no significant differences in brain activity while participants were exposed to scenarios in which negative events befell people from different nations. This may be due to the individuation of victims by providing personal information about them.