The Ash Twins Blog

A perhaps unsurprising but nonetheless fascinating finding by social psychologists:

Borrowing from the media, communication, and psychological literatures on parasocial, or one–sided, relationships to media figures, the current investigation examined the processes underlying the anthropomorphism of favorite television characters. Two studies tested the hypothesis that individuals’ affection for television characters predicts their perceptions of realness. In Study One, participants reported their perceptions of and feelings toward either their favorite television character or an equally familiar, nonfavorite character, and results provided initial support for our hypothesis. In Study Two, participants were passively exposed to an image of either their favorite television characters or a control, nonfavorite character while completing well–learned and novel motor tasks. In line with classic social facilitation findings, participants in the “presence of” their favorite character (versus the nonfavorite character) demonstrated facilitation on the well–learned task and inhibition on the novel task. These studies suggest that feelings for the character may play an important role in encouraging the anthropomorphism of television characters.

Source: http://www.atypon-link.com/GPI/doi/abs/10.1521/soco.2008.26.2.156

Osofsky et al (2005) measured moral disengagement among support staff, executioners, and prison guards. Moral disengagement, in the realm of social psychology, refers to

the process of convincing the self that ethical standards do not apply to oneself in a particular context by separating moral reactions from inhumane conduct by disabling the mechanism of self-condemnation (Fiske, 2004).

Some noteworthy results are as follows:

Analysis of variance of the set of sociodemographic factors revealed no significant differences in moral disengagement for level of education, gender, race, marital status, penitentiaries, and support of the death penalty. However, there was a low but significant correlation, r(246) = .17, p < .01 between age, and moral  disengagement. Older personnel were higher moral disengagers than were the younger ones…

Each of the groups differed significantly from each other beyond the p < .001 level in moral justification… [E]xecutioners favored moral justifications, the support team disavowed such vindications, as did the noninvolved guards, but again to a lesser degree.  Executioners also differed beyond the p < .001 level in their adoption of economic and security justifications from members of the support and noninvolved groups, who did not differ from each other. For dehumanization the same pattern of intergroup differences held: executioners weremore dehumanizing than the support and noninvolved groups (p < .001), which did not differ from each other.As previously noted, regardless of the role they play, all of the guards absolved the implementers of the death penalty of any sense of responsibility. However, the members of the support team did so even more strongly (p < .03) than did the noninvolved guards…

In discussion, the authors note that

Efforts to humanize executions can exacerbate the moral anguish of those who have to perform them. Indeed, to view offenders with dignity and then take their life would exact a heavy emotional toll. To negate moral self-sanctions, executioners do not focus on the taking of life, but rather seek solace in the dignity of the process and in the view that condemned killers have a bestial aspect to their nature and executing them will protect the public. Dehumanization is one of the better group differentiators among the different modes of moral disengagement. Thus, the execution process is institutionally professionalized and dignified, but the offenders tend to be dehumanized by those who have to take a human life.

The paper is available here:

http://baw2008.altervista.org/DOCUMENTS/articoli%20baw%202008/Zimbardo%202005.pdf