Emotions and Hierarchy

Changing Diversity and Shifting Demographics

The impact of increasing diversity and shifting demographics in America

Emotions and Hierarchy

The relationship between hierarchy maintenance and empathic, as well as counter-empathic, emotions

Connecting personality and ideology as antecedents of group-based empathy and schadenfreude

We examine the relationship between personality, ideology, and emotions, arguing that SDO and RWA will predict reduced empathy and increased schadenfreude but towards different groups.

Empathic and counter-empathic emotions shape social hierarchy based on group positionality

Here, I review two categories of emotional antecedents to hierarchy maintenance – empathic and counter-empathic emotions – which directly impact the cooperative or competitive nature of intergroup relations.

Cruelty and indifference are the point: Preference for hierarchy is related to support for policies that harm marginalized groups through feeling both less empathy and more schadenfreude

In four studies we test a model in which SDO leads to active harm primarily through feeling schadenfreude while SDO leads to passive harm primarily through not feeling empathy.

Preference for hierarchy is related to the motivation to feel less empathy and more schadenfreude towards low status people

In three studies we show that higher levels of social dominance orientation (SDO) is related to the desire and choice to feel less empathy and schadenfreude toward low-status targets.

Preference for hierarchy is associated with reduced empathy and increased counter-empathy towards others, especially out-group targets

SDO is negatively related to empathy and positively related to counter-empathy in general. When group boundaries are made salient, the relationship between SDO, empathy, and schadenfreude become stronger for out-group targets, even in a novel groups paradigm and only when groups are competing.