Vicarious kin derogation—when and why people mock the innocent family members of political leaders

Abstract

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. This dynamic helps explain a persistent, toxic feature of modern political discourse: when people seek to harm public figures by attacking their loved ones.