People hold a high-entitativity subgroup responsible for the broader group’s acts

Evidence

Nevertheless, the analyses of causal paths revealed that the rating of intentionality did lead to the rating of responsibility in both the food poisoning and the insider trading scenarios (overall β = .40, p < .01). Furthermore, perceived responsibility significantly influenced the intent to purchase a product of this company (β = −.22, p < .05). Interestingly, the perceived responsibility fully mediated the influence of intentionality perceived in the executive board leading to the simulated consumer’s intent to purchase. Exactly the same meditational effect was found in another experiment using a different scenario (i.e., a sexual harassment case; Hioki & Karasawa, 2010, Study 1). Taken together, these results suggest that a highly entitative subgroup with an executive function (e.g., board of directors) is perceived to behave intentionally and is also held responsible for acts by members of a more comprehensive group (e.g., employees of a company). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 163

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to attribution of collective responsibility in the prejudice-psychology thread — how blame attaches to salient subgroups rather than diffuse aggregates.
• SEED: Angle: how perceived intentionality of visible elites (executives, political leaders) gets converted into consumer and public blame directed at the whole organization.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 163