Heroes and villains
The Power and Limits of Personal Change: When a Bad Past Does (and Does Not) Inspire in the Present
Nadav Klein & Ed O'Brien
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Observing other people improve their lives can be a powerful source of inspiration. Eight experiments explore the power, limits, and reasons for this power of personal change to inspire. We find that people who have improved from undesirable pasts (e.g., people who used to abuse extreme drugs but no longer do) are more inspiring than people who maintain consistently desirable standings (e.g., people who have never used extreme drugs to begin with), because change is perceived as more effortful than stability (Experiments 1a and 1b). The inspirational power of personal change is rooted in people’s lack of access to the internal struggles and hard work that many others may endure to successfully remain ‘always-good.’ Accordingly, giving observers access into the effort underlying others’ success in maintaining consistently positive standings restores the inspiring power of being ‘always-good’ (Experiments 2–4). Finally, change is more inspiring than stability across many domains but one: people who used to harm others but have since reformed (e.g., ex-bullies or ex-cheaters) do not inspire, and in many cases are indeed less inspiring than people who have never harmed others to begin with (Experiments 5–7). Together, these studies reveal how, why, and when one’s past influences one’s present in the eyes of others: having some “bad” in your past can be surprisingly positive, at least partly because observers assume that becoming “good” is harder than being “good” all along.
Learning from stories of leadership: How reading about personalized and socialized politicians impacts performance on an ethical decision-making simulation
Logan Watts et al.
Leadership Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Stories about notable, 20th-century politicians were investigated as a means by which reading stories of leadership influences subsequent ethical decision-making performance. Undergraduates read four short stories in which charismatic politicians exhibited a personalized, socialized, or neutral power orientation, followed by responding to four ethical dilemmas in the marketing domain — a distant transfer task. Results indicated that reading stories featuring personalized protagonists inhibited subsequent ethical decision-making processes. However, intensity of narrative processing, personal identification with the protagonist, and presence or absence of an ethical salience probe moderated these effects. Implications are discussed regarding the use of stories as a tool for ethical development and the importance of managing stories of leadership circulated throughout organizations and society.
The Evil Animal: A Terror Management Theory Perspective on the Human Tendency to Kill Animals
Uri Lifshin et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, June 2017, Pages 743-757
Abstract:
This research tested whether support for the killing of animals serves a terror management function. In five studies, death primes caused participants to support the killing of animals more than control primes, unless the participants’ self-esteem had been elevated (Study 4). This effect was not moderated by gender, preexisting attitudes toward killing animals or animal rights, perceived human–animal similarity, religiosity, political orientation, or by the degree to which the killing was justified. Support for killing animals after subliminal death primes was also associated with an increased sense of power and invulnerability (Study 5). Implications and future directions are discussed.
The Adaptive Utility of Deontology: Deontological Moral Decision-Making Fosters Perceptions of Trust and Likeability
Donald Sacco et al.
Evolutionary Psychological Science, June 2017, Pages 125–132
Abstract:
Although various motives underlie moral decision-making, recent research suggests that deontological moral decision-making may have evolved, in part, to communicate trustworthiness to conspecifics, thereby facilitating cooperative relations. Specifically, social actors whose decisions are guided by deontological (relative to utilitarian) moral reasoning are judged as more trustworthy, are preferred more as social partners, and are trusted more in economic games. The current study extends this research by using an alternative manipulation of moral decision-making as well as the inclusion of target facial identities to explore the potential role of participant and target sex in reactions to moral decisions. Participants viewed a series of male and female targets, half of whom were manipulated to either have responded to five moral dilemmas consistent with an underlying deontological motive or utilitarian motive; participants indicated their liking and trust toward each target. Consistent with previous research, participants liked and trusted targets whose decisions were consistent with deontological motives more than targets whose decisions were more consistent with utilitarian motives; this effect was stronger for perceptions of trust. Additionally, women reported greater dislike for targets whose decisions were consistent with utilitarianism than men. Results suggest that deontological moral reasoning evolved, in part, to facilitate positive relations among conspecifics and aid group living and that women may be particularly sensitive to the implications of the various motives underlying moral decision-making.
A Long Time Coming: Delays in Collective Apologies and Their Effects on Sincerity and Forgiveness
Michael Wenzel et al.
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Political apologies by one group to another often occur a significant period of time after the original transgression. What effect does such a delay have on perceptions of sincerity and forgiveness? A delayed apology could reflect the offender group's reluctance to apologize, or, alternatively, it could represent time and consideration spent on developing an appropriate response. In the latter case, the delayed apology would represent a sincere acknowledgment of the harm done, whereas in the former case it would not. In two studies, we found that a verbal collective apology, when delayed, was perceived to be less sincere than when offered more immediately following a transgression, and this translated to less forgiveness. However, in Study 2, the negative effects of time delay on sincerity and forgiveness were mitigated or reversed when the apology was in the form of commemoration. The commemorative apology, in particular when delayed, gave rise to favorable attributions (including representativeness of apologizing group, commitment to remember, and giving voice to victims), which mediated the effects on sincerity. The results suggest that collective apologies that are offered with considerable delay appear less meaningful and less deserving of a forgiving response, unless the apologizing group is able to express consideration and thoughtfulness through the apology process.
Do higher achievers cheat less? An experiment of self-revealing individual cheating
Gideon Yaniv, Erez Siniver & Yossef Tobol
Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, June 2017, Pages 91–96
Abstract:
The extensive body of economic and psychological research correlating between students' cheating and their academic grade point average (GPA) consistently finds a significant negative relationship between cheating and the GPA. However, this literature is entirely based on students' responses to direct-question surveys that inquire whether they have ever cheated on their academic assignments. The present paper examines this relationship on the basis of experimental data. It reports the results of a two-round experiment designed to expose student cheating at the individual level and correlate it with three intellectual achievement measures: the GPA, the high-school matriculation average grade (MAG) and the psychometric exam score (PES). The experiment involved two classes of third-year economics students incentivized by a competitive reward to answer a multiple-choice trivia quiz without consulting their electronic devices. While this forbiddance was deliberately overlooked in the first round, providing an opportunity to cheat, it was strictly enforced in the second, conducted two months later in the same classes with the same quiz. A comparison of subjects' performance in the two rounds, self-revealed a considerable extent of cheating in the first one. Regressing the individual cheating levels on subjects' gender and their intellectual achievement measures exhibited no significant differences in cheating between males and females. However, cheating of both genders was found to significantly increase with each achievement measure, implying, in sharp contrast with the direct-question surveys, that higher achievers are bigger cheaters.
It takes an insecure liar to catch a liar: The link between attachment insecurity, deception, and detection of deception
Tsachi Ein-Dor et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, 15 July 2017, Pages 81–87
Abstract:
Lies and deceptions are prevalent in our daily lives, yet most people merely guess when attempting to distinguish between lies and truths. In the current research, we examined the validity of the saying that “it takes a thief to know a thief” by showing that it takes a good liar – one high in attachment insecurity – to detect another liar. In Study 1, 68 card players participated in a Bullshit tournament – a card game in which players try to deceive other players while also striving to detect their deceptions. In Study 2 (N = 99), people who cheated on their romantic partner (versus those who did not) were asked to detect cues of infidelity. Results confirmed our expectations and showed that good liars and cheaters, who are usually insecure individuals, are better at detecting lies and dishonesty. These results are discussed from the perspective of social defense theory, highlighting the utility of personality traits that are often deemed maladaptive.
Do the Right Thing: Preferences for Moral Behavior, Rather Than Equity or Efficiency per se, Drive Human Prosociality
Valerio Capraro & David Rand
Yale Working Paper, May 2017
Abstract:
Decades of experimental research have shown that some people forgo personal gains to benefit others in unilateral one-shot anonymous interactions. To explain these results, behavioral economists typically assume that people have social preferences for minimizing inequality and/or maximizing efficiency (social welfare). Here we present data that are fundamentally incompatible with these standard social preference models. We introduce the “Trade-Off Game” (TOG), where players unilaterally choose between an equitable option and an efficient option. We show that simply changing the labelling of the options to describe the equitable versus efficient option as morally right completely reverses people’s behavior in the TOG. Moreover, people who take the positively framed action, be it equitable or efficient, are more prosocial in a separate Dictator Game (DG) and Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD). Rather than preferences for equity and/or efficiency per se, we propose a generalized morality preference that motivates people to do what they think is morally right. When one option is clearly selfish and the other pro-social (e.g. equitable and/or efficient), as in the DG and PD, the economic outcomes are enough to determine what is morally right. When one option is not clearly more prosocial than the other, as in the TOG, framing resolves the ambiguity about which choice is moral. In addition to explaining our data, this account organizes prior findings that framing impacts cooperation in the standard simultaneous PD, but not in the asynchronous PD or the DG. Thus we present a new framework for understanding the basis of human prosociality.
Moral hindsight
Nadine Fleischhut, Björn Meder & Gerd Gigerenzer
Experimental Psychology, March/April 2017, Pages 110-123
Abstract:
How are judgments in moral dilemmas affected by uncertainty, as opposed to certainty? We tested the predictions of a consequentialist and deontological account using a hindsight paradigm. The key result is a hindsight effect in moral judgment. Participants in foresight, for whom the occurrence of negative side effects was uncertain, judged actions to be morally more permissible than participants in hindsight, who knew that negative side effects occurred. Conversely, when hindsight participants knew that no negative side effects occurred, they judged actions to be more permissible than participants in foresight. The second finding was a classical hindsight effect in probability estimates and a systematic relation between moral judgments and probability estimates. Importantly, while the hindsight effect in probability estimates was always present, a corresponding hindsight effect in moral judgments was only observed among “consequentialist” participants who indicated a cost-benefit trade-off as most important for their moral evaluation.
Promises and lies: Can observers detect deception in written messages?
Jingnan Chen & Daniel Houser
Experimental Economics, June 2017, Pages 396–419
Abstract:
We design a laboratory experiment to examine predictions of trustworthiness in a novel three-person trust game. We investigate whether and why observers of the game can predict the trustworthiness of hand-written communications. Observers report their perception of the trustworthiness of messages, and make predictions about the senders’ behavior. Using observers’ decisions, we are able to classify messages as “promises” or “empty talk.” Drawing from substantial previous research, we hypothesize that certain factors influence whether a sender is likely to honor a message and/or whether an observer perceives the message as likely to be honored: the mention of money; the use of encompassing words; and message length. We find that observers have more trust in longer messages and “promises”; promises that mention money are significantly more likely to be broken; and observers trust equally in promises that do and do not mention money. Overall, observers perform slightly better than chance at predicting whether a message will be honored. We attribute this result to observers’ ability to distinguish promises from empty talk, and to trust promises more than empty talk. However, within each of these two categories, observers are unable to discern between messages that senders will honor from those that they will not.