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Vicarious kin derogation -- when and why people mock the innocent family members of


SIMONE TANG ASSISTANT PROFESSOR


Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration


Cornell SC Johnson College of Business Cornell University


Co-authors • Simone Tang Assistant professor, Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of


Hotel Administration, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University • Kurt Gray, Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill


political leaders Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 120, September 2025 LINK TO PAPER LINK TO SIMONE TANG VIDEO


Summary Despite the widespread human aversion to harming the innocent, people


often mock or attack the children and spouses of public figures they dislike, a pattern we call vicarious kin derogation (VKD). Targeting the vulnerable kin of powerful figures has been used to inflict psychological pain, from ancient China to modern-day North Korea, to social media in the West. Six studies explore VKD with both experimental and field data. Across 562,066 tweets directed at US presidential candidates, people derogate politicians’ loved ones when those loved ones seem more emotionally vulnerable than the candidate themselves (Study 1).


In experiments, people engage in VKD when a politician seems more emotionally affected by attacks on family than on himself (Studies 2 and 4), and when people are motivated to inflict suffering on the public figure (Study 5). At the same time, people are less likely to endorse VKD when reminded that it targets innocent individuals (Studies 3 and 5). Together, these studies reveal a central psychological tension: VKD is satisfying when it seems to hurt an otherwise invulnerable leader, but people still dislike harming the innocent. Tis dynamic helps explain a persistent, toxic feature of modern political discourse: when people seek to harm public figures by attacking their loved ones.


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| RESEARCH WITH IMPACT: CORNELL SC JOHNSON COLLEGE OF BUSINESS • 2025 EDITION


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