Perspective-Taking in Evaluating Conflict

Conflicts between groups are affected by myriad historical and situational factors. Yet
people are rarely overwhelmed by this complexity and are able to adopt a coherent
depiction of the conflict, often with an unequivocal allocation of blame to one group. A
person's final judgment tells only a fraction of the story. To uncover the whole story,
numerous factors must be considered. Two such factors are whether the person harbors
implicit prejudice toward an involved group and whether the way in which relevant
information is presented will allow for the emergence of perspective-taking and provide
insight into the conflict that will aid third-party observes in making a coherent end
judgment. This research explored the role of anti-Muslim prejudice and perspectivetaking
in allocating blame for an ambiguous conflict between two groups that differed
only on the dimension of religion (Muslim vs. Christian). Participants completed two
measures of prejudice-an anti-Muslim Implicit Association Test and an explicit antiMuslim
prejudice questionnaire. Participants then viewed one of two versions of a filmed conflict scene. While both films were identical in content, the order of their
contents was reversed (conflict first vs. history first). Participants were then asked to
allocate blame for the conflict to one group over the other. Following this judgment of
blame, participants recorded their thoughts and feelings regarding this judgment into an
audio recorder. These recordings were then played back while they used the Mouse
Paradigm to express the feelings portrayed in their recordings. Results indicated no
relationship between explicit prejudice and allocation of blame. Implicit prejudice scores
were strongly related to allocation of blame, with increases in IAT scores positively
correlating with blame of the Muslim group. Results also suggested a link between
performance on the lA T and the Mouse Paradigm. More specifically, the results suggest
that IAT performance may predict performance on the Mouse Paradigm. Additional
results provided by the Mouse Paradigm provided insight into the deliberative processes
taking place during the allocation of blame. Future research should explore the link
between lA T scores and Mouse Paradigm performance and should be extended to include
other forms of the lAT.