The British journal of social psychology
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People respond compassionately to transgressors whose immorality is rooted in an unfortunate life history. But, are reactions to such historicist narratives uniformly compassionate? We suggest not. We propose that historicist narratives also have a dark side. ⋯ In three studies, we provide evidence that historicist narratives evoke compassion for one but disdain for the multitude. We show that the resulting disdain can diminish prosocial behaviour in unrelated contexts, that it is elicited by both experimenter-provided and participant-generated historicist narratives, and that it is created via blame shifting. Our findings question the assumption that proliferation of historicist thinking would necessarily contribute to creating a more compassionate, humane society.