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Regular version of the site

Victims, Perpetrators, or Both? The Vicious Cycle of Disrespect and Cynical Beliefs about Human Nature

Event ended

Dear colleagues,

 International Scientific-Educational Laboratory for Socio-Cultural Research invites you to scientific seminar from series «Culture Matters»

 

Olga Stavrova

 

PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Social Psychology,

Tilburg University, the Netherlands


«Victims, Perpetrators, or Both?

The Vicious Cycle of Disrespect and Cynical Beliefs about Human Nature»

 

Seminar will be held on April 17, 2017 at 15:30

 Location: Armyanskiy per, 4/2, office 310

 

Working language is English

 

Summary of the report

 The report is devoted to research on testing how cynicism emerges and what maintains it. Cynicism is the tendency to expect that others will engage in deception and exploitation, based on notions that people are morally bankrupt and behave treacherously in order to maximize self-interest. Given that cynicism’s defining features revolve around beliefs about others, we looked for its roots in the interpersonal domain. Drawing on social exchange literatures, we focused on disrespect. We proposed that being the target of disrespect gives rise to hostile affect. Hostility strengthens beliefs about people’s nefarious nature (thus inciting cynical views), which predisposes people to further disrespect by others. The end result is a vicious cycle: cynicism and disrespect fuel one another. Two large-scale longitudinal studies, spanning 4 and 9 years, showed that feeling disrespected and holding cynical views mutually give rise to each other in an escalating pattern (Studies 1 and 2). Both effects were mediated by hostile affect (Study 1). An experiment showed that to the extent that people endorsed cynical beliefs, others viewed them as being less sociomoral and, consequently, were inclined to treat them disrespectfully (Study 3). Study 4’s weeklong daily-diary study showed that cynical individuals’ experiences of disrespect resulted in an increased propensity to treat others disrespectfully, which in turn increased the likelihood of being treated disrespectfully by others. These results illustrate how experiencing disrespect gives rise to cynicism and how cynicism elicits disrespectful reactions in others, in turn reinforcing the cynicism that caused these negative reactions in the first place.

 

We invite students, HSE staff,entrance is free. Those wishing to attend the seminar from other organizations need to apply for a pass to Dmitrii Dubrov (ddubrov@hse.ru)