Eye movements to audiovisual scenes reveal expectations of a just world.

Abstract

When confronted with bad things happening to good people, observers often engage reactive strategies, such as victim derogation, to maintain a belief in a just world. Although such reasoning is usually made retrospectively, we investigated the extent to which knowledge of another person's good or bad behavior can also bias people's online expectations for subsequent good or bad outcomes. Using a fully-crossed design, participants listened to auditory scenarios that varied in terms of whether the characters engaged in morally good or bad behavior while their eye movements were tracked around concurrent visual scenes depicting good and bad outcomes. We found that the good (bad) behavior of the characters influenced gaze preferences for good (bad) outcomes just prior to the actual outcomes being revealed. These findings suggest that beliefs about a person's moral worth encourage observers to foresee a preferred deserved outcome as the event unfolds. We include evidence to show that this effect cannot be explained in terms of affective priming or matching strategies.

Moral Perception

“…Before revealing what happened next, participants were given a preview of two possible outcomes for the protagonists: a good one (e.g., a successful business contract) and a bad one (e.g., a terrible car accident). People's eye gaze revealed that they were expecting good outcomes to befall good protagonists and bad outcomes to befall bad protagonists [8]. When individuals view a morally good or bad actor, their visual attention reflects expectations that people will get what they deserve.…”

Making sense of misfortune: Deservingness, self-esteem, and patterns of self-defeat.

“…Research has confirmed that observers judge bad (good) people as deserving of their fortuitous bad (good) fortunes (e.g., Callan, Sutton, Harvey, & Dawtry, 2014; Pepitone & L’Armand, 1996; Rice & Trafimow, 2011), and the innocent suffering of devalued (vs. valued) individuals and groups as less unfair (e.g., Callan, Dawtry, & Olson, 2012; Callan, Powell, & Ellard, 2007; Correia, Vala, & Aguiar, 2007; Lerner & Agar, 1972). Crucially, people also expect bad (good) things to happen to bad (good) people (e.g., Callan, Ferguson, & Bindemann, 2013; Kaplowitz, 1979). For example, Callan, Ellard, and Nicol (2006) found that participants rated a man who cheated on his wife as more deserving of a completely unrelated car accident than participants who learned the man did not cheat.…”

How Much Does Effortful Thinking Underlie Observers’ Reactions to Victimization?

“…From this perspective, initial, schema-based reactions to injustice may lead people to, for example, intuitively connect a random bad outcome to the recipient's prior bad deeds , have the impulse to punish perpetrators of harm (Goldberg, J. S. Lerner, & Tetlock, 1999), or spontaneously help a victim (Holmes, Miller, & Lerner, 2002;Rand, Greene, & Nowak, 2012). In support, a growing body of experimental research has suggested that people's reactions to victimization may occur intuitively-that is, without requiring a rational mind-set or much effortful thought (e.g., Aguiar, Vala, Correia, & Pereira, 2008;Callan, Ferguson, & Bindemann, 2013;Callan, Sutton, & Dovale, 2010;Goldberg et al, 1999;Loseman & van den Bos, 2012;Maas & van den Bos, 2009;van Prooijen & van de Veer, 2010). For example, adopting an eye-tracking methodology, Callan et al (2013) found that the good (bad) behavior of characters within audio-visual scenes biased participants' eye gaze towards images of good (bad) outcomes before the actual outcomes were revealed verbally.…”

“…In support, a growing body of experimental research has suggested that people's reactions to victimization may occur intuitively-that is, without requiring a rational mind-set or much effortful thought (e.g., Aguiar, Vala, Correia, & Pereira, 2008;Callan, Ferguson, & Bindemann, 2013;Callan, Sutton, & Dovale, 2010;Goldberg et al, 1999;Loseman & van den Bos, 2012;Maas & van den Bos, 2009;van Prooijen & van de Veer, 2010). For example, adopting an eye-tracking methodology, Callan et al (2013) found that the good (bad) behavior of characters within audio-visual scenes biased participants' eye gaze towards images of good (bad) outcomes before the actual outcomes were revealed verbally. This finding highlights how a concern for justice establishes an automatic preference for observers to expect outcomes that are consistent with what people deserve.…”

“…On the whole, however, the research concerning people's intuitive reactions to injustice has largely focused on a variety of different experimental contexts (e.g., anticipatory eye-movements within audio-visual scenes; Callan et al, 2013) and responses to misfortune (e.g., immanent justice attributions; than those examined by van den Bos and Maas (2009). Thus, we investigated whether effortful thought is necessary for people to respond to episodes of injustice in ways more closely aligned with van den Bos and …”