1. //
  2. Start
  3. //
  4. Publications
  5. //
  6. “Terrorist” or “Mentally Ill”
  7. //

“Terrorist” or “Mentally Ill”: Motivated Biases Rooted in Partisanship Shape Attributions About Violent Actors

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

Authors

We investigated whether motivated reasoning rooted in partisanship affects the attributions individuals make about violent attackers’ underlying motives and group memberships. Study 1 demonstrated that on the day of the Brexit referendum pro-leavers (vs. pro-remainers) attributed an exculpatory (i.e., mental health) versus condemnatory (i.e., terrorism) motive to the killing of a pro-remain politician. Study 2 demonstrated that pro-immigration (vs. anti-immigration) perceivers in Germany ascribed a mental health (vs. terrorism) motive to a suicide attack by a Syrian refugee, predicting lower endorsement of punitiveness against his group (i.e., refugees) as a whole. Study 3 experimentally manipulated target motives, showing that Americans distanced a politically motivated (vs. mentally ill) violent individual from their in-group and assigned him harsher punishment—patterns most pronounced among high-group identifiers.

Original languageEnglish
JournalSocial Psychological and Personality Science
Volume10
Issue number4
Pages (from-to)485-493
Number of pages9
ISSN1948-5506
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.05.2019
Externally publishedYes

Related by journal

Belief in Free Will Is Related to Internal Attribution in Self-Perception

Genschow, O. & Lange, J., 01.11.2022, In: Social Psychological and Personality Science. 13, 8, p. 1259-1268 10 p.

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

Gendered Self-Views Across 62 Countries: A Test of Competing Models

Kosakowska-Berezecka, N., Bosson, J. K., Jurek, P., Besta, T., Olech, M., Vandello, J. A., Bender, M., Dandy, J., Hoorens, V., Jasinskaja-Lahti, I., Mankowski, E., Venäläinen, S., Abuhamdeh, S., Agyemang, C. B., Akbaş, G., Albayrak-Aydemir, N., Ammirati, S., Anderson, J., Anjum, G., Ariyanto, A., Aruta, J. J. B. R., Ashraf, M., Bakaitytė, A., Becker, M., Bertolli, C., Bërxulli, D., Best, D. L., Bi, C., Block, K., Boehnke, M., Bongiorno, R., Bosak, J., Casini, A., Chen, Q., Chi, P., Cubela Adoric, V., Daalmans, S., de Lemus, S., Dhakal, S., Dvorianchikov, N., Egami, S., Etchezahar, E., Esteves, C. S., Froehlich, L., Garcia-Sanchez, E., Gavreliuc, A., Gavreliuc, D., Gomez, Á., Guizzo, F., Graf, S., Greijdanus, H., Grigoryan, A., Grzymała-Moszczyńska, J., Guerch, K., Gustafsson Sendén, M., Hale, M. L., Hämer, H., Hirai, M., Hoang Duc, L., Hřebíčková, M., Hutchings, P. B., Jensen, D. H., Karabati, S., Kelmendi, K., Kengyel, G., Khachatryan, N., Ghazzawi, R., Kinahan, M., Kirby, T. A., Kovacs, M., Kozlowski, D., Krivoshchekov, V., Kryś, K., Kulich, C., Kurosawa, T., Lac An, N. T., Labarthe-Carrara, J., Lauri, M. A., Latu, I., Lawal, A. M., Li, J., Lindner, J., Lindqvist, A., Maitner, A. T., Makarova, E., Makashvili, A., Malayeri, S., Malik, S., Mancini, T., Manzi, C., Mari, S., Martiny, S. E., Mayer, C. H., Mihić, V., MiloševićĐorđević, J., Moreno-Bella, E., Moscatelli, S., Moynihan, A. B., Muller, D., Narhetali, E., Neto, F., Noels, K. A., Nyúl, B., O’Connor, E. C., Ochoa, D. P., Ohno, S., Olanrewaju Adebayo, S., Osborne, R., Pacilli, M. G., Palacio, J., Patnaik, S., Pavlopoulos, V., de León, P. P., Piterová, I., Porto, J. B., Puzio, A., Pyrkosz-Pacyna, J., Rentería Pérez, E., Renström, E., Rousseaux, T., Ryan, M. K., Safdar, S., Sainz, M., Salvati, M., Samekin, A., Schindler, S., Sevincer, A. T., Seydi, M., Shepherd, D., Sherbaji, S., Schmader, T., Simão, C., Sobhie, R., Sobiecki, J., De Souza, L., Sarter, E., Sulejmanović, D., Sullivan, K. E., Tatsumi, M., Tavitian-Elmadjian, L., Thakur, S. J., Thi Mong Chi, Q., Torre, B., Torres, A., Torres, C. V., Türkoğlu, B., Ungaretti, J., Valshtein, T., Van Laar, C., van der Noll, J., Vasiutynskyi, V., Vauclair, C. M., Vohra, N., Walentynowicz, M., Ward, C., Włodarczyk, A., Yang, Y., Yzerbyt, V., Zanello, V., Zapata-Calvente, A. L., Zawisza, M., Žukauskienė, R. & Żadkowska, M., 09.2023, In: Social Psychological and Personality Science. 14, 7, p. 808-824 17 p.

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

Global Consciousness Predicts Behavioral Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Empirical Evidence From 35 Cultures

Chen, S. X., Ng, J. C. K., Hui, B. P. H., Au, A. K. Y., Lam, B. C. P., Wu, W. C. H., Pun, N., Beattie, P., Welzel, C. & Liu, J. H., 01.06.2023, In: Social Psychological and Personality Science. 14, 5, p. 662-671 10 p.

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

A Multilab Replication of the Ego Depletion Effect

Dang, J., Barker, P., Baumert, A., Bentvelzen, M., Berkman, E., Buchholz, N., Buczny, J., Chen, Z., De Cristofaro, V., de Vries, L., Dewitte, S., Giacomantonio, M., Gong, R., Homan, M., Imhoff, R., Ismail, I., Jia, L., Kubiak, T., Lange, F., Li, D. Y., Livingston, J., Ludwig, R., Panno, A., Pearman, J., Rassi, N., Schiöth, H. B., Schmitt, M., Sevincer, A. T., Shi, J., Stamos, A., Tan, Y. C., Wenzel, M., Zerhouni, O., Zhang, L. W., Zhang, Y. J. & Zinkernagel, A., 01.2021, In: Social Psychological and Personality Science. 12, 1, p. 14-24 11 p.

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

Professional Judges’ Disbelief in Free Will Does Not Decrease Punishment

Genschow, O., Hawickhorst, H., Rigoni, D., Aschermann, E. & Brass, M., 01.04.2021, In: Social Psychological and Personality Science. 12, 3, p. 357-362 6 p.

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

Other publications by the same author(s)

Space-focused stereotypes and their potential role in group-based disparities in social work services

Essien, I. & Siem, B., 24.04.2025, In: Social Work & Society. 22, 2, p. 1-17 17 p.

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

"White and educated?" Toward a (More) Diverse Climate Movement

Siem, B. & Essien, I., 2025, (Accepted/In press) In: In-Mind Magazin.

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Transfer › peer-review

Deconstructing and reconstructing diversity in client-provider-relationships of social work

Alberth, L., Kollender, E., Karber, A., Sandermann, P. & Siem, B., 24.04.2024, In: Social Work & Society. 22, 2, p. 1-8

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

Key experiences of volunteers in Refugee Aid

Landmann, H., Siem, B., Fuchs, B. & Rohmann, A., 27.07.2023, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies. 16 p.

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

On the trajectory of discrimination: A meta-analysis and forecasting survey capturing 44 years of field experiments on gender and hiring decisions

Gender Audits Forecasting Collaboration, Schaerer, M., Plessis, C. D., Nguyen, M. H. B., Aert, R. C. M. V., Tiokhin, L., Lakens, D., Clemente, E. G., Pfeiffer, T., Dreber, A., Johannesson, M., Clark, C. J. & Siem, B., 01.11.2023, In: Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 179, 26 p., 104280.

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

DOI

Recently viewed

Researchers

  1. Martin Kügemann