Pegen fingre er smitsomt

Forskning kaster nyt lys på den sociale dynamik, der opstår, når nogen beskylder nogen for noget. Der er en tendens til, at flere andre løber med uden selv at vide noget om situationen. Måske skyldes dette at jo mere folk angriber andre, jo mindre regner de med selv at komme i søgelyset. Den slags barnagtig adfærd vokser det moderne menneske åbenbart ikke fra:

Nathanael J. Fast, an assistant professor of management and organization at the USC Marshall School of Business and Larissa Tiedens, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford, conducted four different experiments and found that publicly blaming others dramatically increases the likelihood that the practice will become viral. The reason: blame spreads quickly because it triggers the perception that one's self-image is under assault and must be protected.

The study called "Blame Contagion: The Automatic Transmission of Self-Serving Attributions" is believed to be the first to examine whether shifting blame to others is socially contagious. The results will be published in the November issue of Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

"When we see others protecting their egos, we become defensive too," says Fast, the study's lead author. "We then try to protect our own self-image by blaming others for our mistakes, which may feel good in the moment." He adds that in the long run, such behavior could hurt one's reputation and be destructive to an organization and further to our society as a whole.