Empathy influences the interpretation of whether others have violated everyday indeterminate rules.

Objective: People encounter institutional rules in many settings of their lives—from schools to workplaces, from commercial places to public spaces. Often these everyday rules are indeterminate, requiring people who apply them to use their own discretion. Psychological processes help explain how lay people decide whether others have violated these everyday rules. Hypothesis: We predicted that when lay people empathize with others, they are less likely to decide that the people they empathize with violated everyday indeterminate rules. Method: We performed two correlational studies (Studies 1 and 2) and two experiments (Studies 3 and 4) using MTurk. We asked participants to read 3 dilemmas involving indeterminate institutional rules (Studies 1–3) or one dilemma (Study 4) and decide whether people violated such rules. Results: Greater empathy for people in these dilemmas was associated with a lower likelihood of deciding that rules were violated—even when controlling for the perceived harmfulness of the infraction—regardless of whether empathy was independently rated in explanations provided by lay people about their decisions (Study 1; N = 725; 51% female; 76.8% White), measured in the form of self-reported empathic concern and inclusion-of-self-in-other (Study 2; N = 1,159; 58% female; 78.9% White), or manipulated based upon whether a person transgressed a rule for selfish versus altruistic reasons (Studies 3; N = 1,073; 53% female; 77.7% White). Moreover, when we manipulated both empathy (selfish vs. altruistic transgression) and rule indeterminacy by altering whether the rule was silent about potential exceptions (indeterminate rule) versus absolutely rejected all exceptions (determinate rule), the likelihood of deciding a rule was violated was lowest when the rule was indeterminate and transgressed for altruistic reasons (Study 4; N = 239; 42% female; 77.0% White). Conclusions: Overall, results reveal a robust effect of empathy on how lay people resolve rule indeterminacy in everyday life, which may foster or frustrate law and public policy, and has implications for the resilience of institutions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)