Research
My core interest is in the psychology of blame. How is it possible to "civilize" people's blame reactions, reducing their impulse to respond in spiteful, vengeful, and potentially inhumane ways to the bad deeds of others?
Please visit my lab website for more details:
Blame Lab (BLAB): http://blamelab-gill.blogspot.com
Selected Publications
Gill, M. J. & Ungson, N. D. (in press). How much blame does he truly deserve? Historicist narratives
engender uncertainty about blameworthiness, facilitating motivated cognition in moral judgment.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
Gill, M. J. & Cerce, S. C. (2017). He never willed to have the will he has: Historicist narratives,
civilized” blame, and the need to distinguish two notions of free will. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 112(3), 361-382.
Gill, M. J. & Getty, P. D. (2016). On shifting the blame to humanity: Historicist narratives
regarding transgressors evoke compassion for the transgressor but disdain for humanity.
British Journal of Social Psychology, 55(4), 773-791.
Gill, M. J. & Mendes, D. M. (2016). When the minority thinks "essentially" like the majority:
Blacks distinguish bio-somatic from bio-behavioral essentialism in their conceptions of Whites,
and only the latter predicts prejudice. PLOS ONE, 11(8), e0160086.
At: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0160086
Andreychik, M. R. & Gill, M. J. (2015). Do natural kind beliefs about social groups contribute to
prejudice?: Distinguishing bio-somatic from bio-behavioral essentialism, and both of these
from entitativity. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 18(4), 454-474.
Gill, M. J. & Andreychik, M. R. (2014). The Social Explanatory Style Questionnaire: Assessing
moderators of basic social-cognitive phenomena including spontaneous trait inference,
the Fundamental Attribution Error, and moral blame. PLOS ONE, 9(7), e100886.
At: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0100886
Gill, M. J., Andreychik, M. R., & Getty, P. D. (2013). More than a lack of control: External
explanations can evoke compassion for outgroups by increasing perceptions of
suffering (independent of perceived control). Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin 39(1), 73-87.
Gill, M. J., Packer, D. J., & Van Bavel, J. (2013). More to morality than mutualism: Consistent
contributors exist and they can inspire costly generosity in others. [Commentary on
Baumard et al., A Mutualistic Approach to Morality]. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36(1), 90.
Moskowitz, G.B. & Gill, M.J. (2013). Interpersonal perception: From snap judgments to
the regulation of enduring relationships. In D. Reisberg (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of
Cognitive Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Andreychik, M. R. & Gill, M. J. (2012). Do negative implicit associations indicate negative
attitudes?: Social explanations moderate whether ostensible "negative" associations
are prejudice-based or empathy-based. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,
48, 1082-1093.
Andreychik, M. R . & Gill, M.J. (2009). Ingroup identity moderates the impact of social
explanations on intergroup attitudes: External explanations are not inherently prosocial.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 1632-1645.
Gill, M. J. & Andreychik, M. A. (2009). Getting emotional about explanations: Social
explanations and social explanatory styles as bases of prosocial emotions and intergroup
attitudes. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3(6), 1038-1054.
Gill, M. J. & Andreychik, M. R. (2007). Explanation and intergroup emotion: Social
explanations as a foundation of prejudice-related compunction. Group Processes
and Intergroup Relations [Special Issue on Intergroup Emotion], 10, 87-106.
Gill, M.J. (2004). When information does not deter stereotyping: Prescriptive stereotyping can bias
judgments under conditions that discourage descriptive stereotyping. Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, 40(5), 619-632.
Gill, M. J. (2003). Biased against "them" more than "him": Stereotype use in group-directed and
individual-directed judgment. Social Cognition, 21(3), 321-348.
