Müller-Kuckelberg, Maike Malena (2024) Seeing Invisible Harm: The Impact of Harm Salience & Empathetic Concern on Moral Judgement. Bachelor thesis, Psychology.
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Abstract
This study explores how efforts to raise social harm awareness (e.g. social safety campaigns) influence the perception of psychological harm and subsequent moral judgments, and how empathetic concern (EC) may influence this relationship. Psychological harm, often less explicit than physical harm, requires inferring the thoughts and feelings of victims. As the societal understanding of harm broadens to encompass more subtle, psychological phenomena, organizations increasingly make efforts to raise awareness for social safety, e.g. by launching campaigns under this banner. Social safety campaigns aim at defining and denouncing potentially harmful behaviors, thereby perhaps priming individuals to perceive greater harm in ambiguous situations. We conducted an online vignette-based experiment to explore this claim. We predicted that individuals would rate ambiguous, potentially harmful vignettes as more harmful and morally wrong if being exposed to a social safety campaign prior. Further, we expected empathetic concern (EC) to moderate this effect, since EC plays an important role in seeing “invisible” psychological harm and making moral judgments. Findings were largely not statistically significant; however, significant correlations between harm perception and moral judgment as well as an effect of the social safety campaign on increased moral disapproval of a subtle case of sexual harassment (p = .03) were found.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Bachelor) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Graso, M. |
| Degree programme: | Psychology |
| Differentiation route: | None [Bachelor Psychology] |
| Date Deposited: | 23 Jul 2024 13:45 |
| Last Modified: | 23 Jul 2024 13:45 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/4092 |
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