Brutal Truth
Persuasive and Unpersuasive Critiques of Torture
Ron Hassner
Perspectives on Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Torture critics have offered two types of arguments in the hope of swaying public opinion against torture: A pragmatic (consequentialist) argument that "torture doesn't work" and a moral (deontological) argument about the immorality and cruelty of torture. I present findings from two survey experiments about public support for torture among U.S. adults. The great majority of the respondents in these surveys did not endorse pragmatic arguments. They believed that torture was a quick and effective means of extracting information from detainees who had information about terror attacks. Respondents were unpersuaded by the suggestion that evidence extracted by means of torture might be fragmentary, outdated, or merely corroborative. However, when respondents were informed about the protracted nature of torture, which often requires weeks or months of interrogation before yielding results, their support for torture was lower by 14% in one survey and by 30% in a second survey. Survey participants refused to endorse prolonged torture not because they perceived torture to be ineffective, but because they felt that prolonged torture was cruel. Torture critics would be well advised to steer away from less persuasive arguments about torture inefficacy and instead confront audiences with sobering truths about the cruelty of torture.
Bigotry and the human-animal divide: (Dis)belief in human evolution and bigoted attitudes across different cultures
Stylianos Syropoulos et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current investigation tested if people's basic belief in the notion that human beings have developed from other animals (i.e., belief in evolution) can predict human-to-human prejudice and intergroup hostility. Using data from the American General Social Survey and Pew Research Center (Studies 1-4), and from three online samples (Studies 5, 7, 8) we tested this hypothesis across 45 countries, in diverse populations and religious settings, across time, in nationally representative data (N = 60,703), and with more comprehensive measures in online crowdsourced data (N = 2,846). Supporting the hypothesis, low belief in human evolution was associated with higher levels of prejudice, racist attitudes, and support for discriminatory behaviors against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ), Blacks, and immigrants in the United States (Study 1), with higher ingroup biases, prejudicial attitudes toward outgroups, and less support for conflict resolution in samples collected from 19 Eastern European countries (Study 2), 25 Muslim countries (Study 3), and Israel (Study 4). Further, among Americans, lower belief in evolution was associated with greater prejudice and militaristic attitudes toward political outgroups (Study 5). Finally, perceived similarity to animals (a construct distinct from belief in evolution, Study 6) partially mediated the link between belief in evolution and prejudice (Studies 7 and 8), even when controlling for religious beliefs, political views, and other demographic variables, and were also observed for nondominant groups (i.e., religious and racial minorities). Overall, these findings highlight the importance of belief in human evolution as a potentially key individual-difference variable predicting racism and prejudice.
Who is Neoliberal? Durkheimian Individualism and Support for Market Mechanisms
Augustin Landier & David Thesmar
NBER Working Paper, April 2022
Abstract:
This paper investigates the drivers of support for market mechanisms (competition and optimizing behavior by agents). We elicit such attitudes using concrete and simplified situations where respondents face a tradeoff between an economically efficient situation and a pro-social objective. We find that support for deviation from efficient solutions achieved through market mechanism is strongly correlated with moral values as defined by Haidt (2013): care, fairness, loyalty and authority. While the traditional left-right divide spans some of this variation, an even bigger role is played by what we label "individualism", the average support for all 4 values, a moral stance orthogonal to the left-right divide. We ground this measure of individualism in the sociology of Emile Durkheim.
It might become true: How prefactual thinking licenses dishonesty
Beth Anne Helgason & Daniel Effron
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In our "post-truth" era, misinformation spreads not only because people believe falsehoods, but also because people sometimes give dishonesty a moral pass. The present research examines how the moral judgments that people form about dishonesty depend not only on what they know to be true, but also on what they imagine might become true. In six studies (N = 3,607), people judged a falsehood as less unethical to tell in the present when we randomly assigned them to entertain prefactual thoughts about how it might become true in the future. This effect emerged with participants from 59 nations judging falsehoods about consumer products, professional skills, and controversial political issues - and the effect was particularly pronounced when participants were inclined to accept that the falsehood might become true. Moreover, thinking prefactually about how a falsehood might become true made people more inclined to share the falsehood on social media. We theorized that, even when people recognize a falsehood as factually incorrect, these prefactual thoughts reduce how unethical the falsehood seems by making the broader meaning that the statement communicates, its gist, seem truer. Mediational evidence was consistent with this theorizing. We argue that prefactual thinking offers people a degree of freedom they can use to excuse lies, and we discuss implications for theories of mental simulation and moral judgment.
"Do not teach them how to fish": The effect of zero-sum beliefs on help giving
Lily Chernyak-Hai & Shai Davidai
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do zero-sum beliefs - the beliefs that one person's success is inevitably balanced by others' failure - affect people's willingness to help their peers and colleagues? In nine studies (and 2 supplementary studies, N = 2,324), we find consistent evidence for the relationship between the belief that success is zero-sum and help giving preferences. Across various hypothetical scenarios and actual help giving decisions, and even when the effort required for helping was minimal, zero-sum beliefs negatively predicted participants' willingness to help their colleagues learn how to succeed on their own (i.e., autonomy-oriented help). In contrast, the belief that success can only be achieved at others' expense did not affect participants' willingness to offer the kind of help that would completely solve their colleagues' problems for them (i.e., dependency-oriented help). Moreover, we find that the effect of zero-sum beliefs on the reluctance to give autonomy-oriented help is mediated by concerns about losing one's status to the recipient, and that removing these concerns about status loss mitigates the negative effect of zero-sum beliefs on help giving. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this robust yet nuanced link between the belief that success is zero-sum and prosocial helping behaviors.
Meh, whatever: The effects of indifference expressions on cooperation in social conflict
Smadar Cohen-Chen et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Conflicts are inherently emotional, yet parties in conflict may choose to explicitly express indifference. It is unclear, however, whether this represents an effective strategy. Drawing on emotions as social information (EASI) theory, we examined the interpersonal effects of indifference expressions in conflict and the processes that underlie these effects. Study 1 indicated that people believe indifference expressions constitute a neutral emotional signal. However, Study 2 demonstrated experimentally that counterparts' indifference expressions reduce focal negotiators' cooperative intentions through both affective (negative affective reactions) and inferential (decreased expected collaboration) processes when compared to negative (anger, contempt), positive (hope), and neutral (no emotion) expressions. Study 3 revealed negative effects of indifference (vs. neutral) expressions on cooperative intentions, expected collaboration, and heart rate variability as a physiological indicator of affective responding. Results further showed an indirect effect through expected collaboration, but not through affective reactions. Study 4 established the negative effects of indifference expressions on a behavioral measure of cooperation through expected collaboration. Studies 5 and 6 (preregistered) demonstrated that the impact of indifference expressions on cooperative intentions (Study 5) and actual cooperation (Study 6) via counterpart's expected collaboration is reduced when a counterpart explicitly indicates cooperative intentions, reducing the diagnostic value of indifference expressions. Across studies (N = 2,447), multiple expressive modalities of indifference were used, including verbal and nonverbal expressions. Findings demonstrate that explicit expressions of indifference have qualitatively different interpersonal effects than other emotional expressions, including neutral expressions, and cast doubt on the effectiveness of expressing indifference in negotiating social conflict.
Perturbation of Right Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Makes Power Holders Less Resistant to Tempting Bribes
Yang Hu et al.
Psychological Science, March 2022, Pages 412-423
Abstract:
Bribery is a common form of corruption that takes place when a briber suborns a power holder to achieve an advantageous outcome at the cost of moral transgression. Although bribery has been extensively investigated in the behavioral sciences, its underlying neurobiological basis remains poorly understood. Here, we employed transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) in combination with a novel paradigm (N = 119 adults) to investigate whether disruption of right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) causally changed bribe-taking decisions of power holders. Perturbing rDLPFC via tDCS specifically made participants more willing to take bribes as the relative value of the offer increased. This tDCS-induced effect could not be explained by changes in other measures. Model-based analyses further revealed that such neural modulation alters the concern for generating profits for oneself via taking bribes and reshapes the concern for the distribution inequity between oneself and the briber, thereby influencing the subsequent decisions. These findings reveal a causal role of rDLPFC in modulating corrupt behavior.
Regulatory fit intensifies moral predispositions
Chethana Achar & Angela Lee
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The experience of regulatory fit shapes subsequent moral conduct by intensifying moral predispositions. Results of seven studies (n = 3,559) show that individuals experiencing regulatory fit versus nonfit are more likely to behave in manners consistent with their moral predispositions as assessed by the trait Moral Disengagement scale, the Machiavellianism scale, and the Honesty-Humility Subscale of the HEXACO-60 inventory. Following an experience of regulatory fit (vs. nonfit), participants with moral predispositions were more likely to consider the decision to engage in sexual intercourse outside a committed relationship as a moral issue (Study 1), and were less willing to do so (Study 2); they also expressed higher intentions of reporting income honestly for tax purposes (Study 3), imposed harsher punishment on a transgressor (Study 4), and self-sacrificed more for the common good in a social dilemma (Studies 4 and 5). The opposite was observed when participants with immoral predispositions experienced regulatory fit (vs. nonfit). In an incentivized sender-receiver game, participants with moral predispositions were less likely to lie for monetary gains when they experienced regulatory fit (vs. nonfit), whereas those with immoral predispositions were more likely to lie (Study 7). By operationalizing the regulatory fit experience as incidental to the moral decision context and assessing moral predispositions with at least a week lead or lag from the main experiment, the findings provide unambiguous evidence that regulatory fit impacts moral conduct by intensifying moral predispositions.
What is good is beautiful (and what isn't, isn't): How moral character affects perceived facial attractiveness
Dexian He et al.
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, forthcoming
Abstract:
A well-documented "beauty is good" stereotype is expressed in the expectation that physically attractive people have more positive characteristics. Recent evidence has also found that unattractive faces are associated with negative character inferences. Is what is good (bad) also beautiful (ugly)? Whether this conflation of aesthetic and moral values is bidirectional is not known. This study tested the hypothesis that complementary "good is beautiful" and "bad is ugly" stereotypes bias aesthetic judgments. Using highly controlled face stimuli, this preregistered study examined whether moral character influences perceptions of attractiveness for different ages and sexes of faces. Compared to faces paired with nonmoral vignettes, those paired with prosocial vignettes were rated significantly more attractive, confident, and friendlier. The opposite pattern characterized faces paired with antisocial vignettes. A significant interaction between vignette type and the age of the face was detected for attractiveness. Moral transgressions affected attractiveness more negatively for younger than older faces. Sex-related differences were not detected. These results suggest information about moral character affects our judgments about facial attractiveness. Better (worse) people are considered more (less) attractive. These findings suggest that beliefs about moral goodness and physical beauty influence each other bidirectionally.