Effects Of Empathy For A Stigmatized Group On The Attitudes

At present, the researches on the stigmatized group as a whole have not been published in China. It is worth exploring and practical to improve the attitudes toward the stigmatized group by inducing empathy for them. In this paper, a review was presented on the definition , theory and current research situations of stigmatized group,empathy,attitudes and changing attitudes. Then two experiments were designed.The study 1 tested :(1) the possibility of improving the attitudes toward people with AIDS by inducing empathy for a young woman with AIDS; (2)possible localization of the effects of the empathy-attitude to which the attitudes toward the young woman with AIDS were not generalized to the whole group with AIDS if the subcategorization occurred, as been found in cognitive strategies to change attitudes; (3)the influence of the victim responsibility on the empathy-attitude effects. The results showed that :(1) inducing empathy for a young woman with AIDS can lead to the improvement of the attitudes toward people with AIDS; (2)the victim responsibility has no significant effects on the attitudes toward people with AIDS;(3)when the young woman with AIDS is not responsible for her plight ,inducing empathy for her significantly improved the participants'attitudes toward both the young women with AIDS and people with AIDS.(4)when the young woman with AIDS is responsible for her plight, participants induced empathy reported more positive attitudes to people with AIDS ,and more negative attitudes toward the young women with AIDS ,which is not of significance.The study 2 tested the effects of empathy on the attitudes toward a more stigmatized group: convicted murderers and ,then, the possible limits of the empathy-attitude effects on the endurence. The results provided only weak evidence of improved attitudes to murderers by inducing empathy when measuring attitudes to this...