The proposed research will explore how people's perceptions of the emotional suffering of Hurricane Katrina victims - many of whom are members of stigmatized groups -- influence their intentions to help or not to help. A growing body of evidence suggests that intergroup biases strongly influence people's inferences about the emotional states of others. People are less likely to attribute higher order, "human" emotions - like grief, or mourning - to members of stigmatized groups. However, research has not yet addressed how biased inferences about others' emotional suffering might influence how people respond to those others. The proposed studies examine the hypothesis that "dehumanization" of Hurricane Katrina victims will decrease people's intentions to help Hurricane Katrina victims, in general. The proposed research also measures a possible mediator of the effect of inferred emotions on helping - experienced emotions of observers. Because people are more likely to vicariously experience emotions of members of their own groups, they are less likely to experience the emotions of members of stigmatized groups. They literally fail to "feel the pain" of such individuals. In the proposed series of experiments, participants from student and non-student samples will read short newspaper articles about the victims of Hurricane Katrina, in which social category information, such as race, age, and socio-economic status, is varied. Using both direct and indirect methods, investigators will measure the effects of these social category manipulations on participants' inferences about victims' emotional states, participants' experienced emotions, and participants' helping behaviors toward Hurricane Katrina victims (via real opportunities to contribute money and time to aid organizations). The results of the proposed experiments would contribute to an understanding of how the inferred emotional suffering of victim groups affects how people respond to those victims, and more broadly, how emotions can influence potentially discriminatory behaviors.
