Morality play
Tip of the Hat, Wag of the Finger: How Moral Decoupling Enables Consumers to Admire and Admonish
Amit Bhattacharjee, Jonathan Berman & Americus Reed
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
What reasoning processes do consumers use to support public figures that act immorally? Existing research emphasizes moral rationalization, whereby people reconstrue improper behavior in order to maintain support for a transgressor. In contrast, the current research proposes that people also engage in moral decoupling, a previously unstudied moral reasoning process by which judgments of performance are separated from judgments of morality. By separating these judgments, moral decoupling allows consumers to support a transgressor's performance while simultaneously condemning their transgressions. Five laboratory studies demonstrate that moral decoupling exists and is psychologically distinct from moral rationalization. Moreover, because moral decoupling does not involve condoning immoral behavior, it is easier to justify than moral rationalization. Finally, a field study suggests that in discussions involving public figures' transgressions, moral decoupling may be more predictive of consumer support (and opposition) than moral rationalization.
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Honesty requires time (and lack of justifications)
Shaul Shalvi, Ori Eldar & Yoella Bereby-Meyer
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent research suggests refraining from cheating in tempting situations requires self-control, indicating serving self-interest is an automatic tendency. However, evidence also suggests people cheat to the extent that they can justify their unethical behavior to themselves. To merge these different lines of research, we adopt a dual-system approach that distinguishes between the intuitive and deliberative cognitive systems. We suggest that for people to restrict their dishonest behavior, they need to have enough time and no justifications for self-serving unethical behavior. We employed an anonymous die-under-cup task in which participants privately roll a die and report the outcome to determine their pay. We manipulated the time available for participants to report their outcome (short vs. ample). Results of two experiments support our prediction, revealing that the dark side of people's automatic self-serving tendency may be overcome when time to decide is ample and private justifications for dishonesty are not available.
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Inventing Racist Roads Not Taken: The Licensing Effect of Immoral Counterfactual Behaviors
Daniel Effron, Dale Miller & Benoît Monin
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Six experiments examined how people strategically use thoughts of foregone misdeeds to regulate their moral behavior. We tested 2 hypotheses: 1st, that people will feel licensed to act in morally dubious ways when they can point to immoral alternatives to their prior behavior, and 2nd, that people made to feel insecure about their morality will exaggerate the extent to which such alternatives existed. Supporting the 1st hypothesis, when White participants could point to racist alternatives to their past actions, they felt they had obtained more evidence of their own virtue (Study 1), they expressed less racial sensitivity (Study 2), and they were more likely to express preferences about employment and allocating money that favored Whites at the expense of Blacks (Study 3). Supporting the 2nd hypothesis, White participants whose security in their identity as nonracists had been threatened remembered a prior task as having afforded more racist alternatives to their behavior than did those who were not threatened. This distortion of the past involved overestimating the number of Black individuals they had encountered on the prior task (Study 4) and exaggerating how stereotypically Black specific individuals had looked (Studies 5 and 6). We discuss implications for moral behavior, the motivated rewriting of one's moral history, and how the life unlived can liberate people to lead the life they want.
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Doing Good Leads to More Good: The Reinforcing Power of a Moral Self-Concept
Liane Young, Alek Chakroff & Jessica Tom
Review of Philosophy and Psychology, September 2012, Pages 325-334
Abstract:
What is the role of self-concept in motivating moral behavior? On one account, when people are primed to perceive themselves as "do-gooders", conscious access to this positive self-concept will reinforce good behavior. On an alternative account, when people are reminded that they have done their "good deed for the day", they will feel licensed to behave worse. In the current study, when participants were asked to recall their own good deeds (positive self-concept), their subsequent charitable donations were nearly twice that of participants who recalled bad deeds, or recent conversation topics, consistent with an account of moral reinforcement. In addition, among participants reporting good deeds, those who did not note whether they were recognized or unrecognized by other people donated significantly more than participants who took note of others' responses. In sum, when people are primed to see themselves as good people, who do good for goodness' sake, not to obtain public credit, they may be motivated to do more good.
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Affect, Not Ideology: A Social Identity Perspective on Polarization
Shanto Iyengar, Gaurav Sood & Yphtach Lelkes
Public Opinion Quarterly, Fall 2012, Pages 405-431
Abstract:
The current debate over the extent of polarization in the American mass public focuses on the extent to which partisans' policy preferences have moved. Whereas "maximalists" claim that partisans' views on policies have become more extreme over time (Abramowitz 2010), "minimalists" (Fiorina and Abrams 2009) contend that the majority of Americans remain centrist, and that what little centrifugal movement has occurred reflects sorting, i.e., the increased association between partisanship and ideology. We argue in favor of an alternative definition of polarization, based on the classic concept of social distance (Bogardus 1947). Using data from a variety of sources, we demonstrate that both Republicans and Democrats increasingly dislike, even loathe, their opponents. We also find that partisan affect is inconsistently (and perhaps artifactually) founded in policy attitudes. The more plausible account lies in the nature of political campaigns; exposure to messages attacking the out-group reinforces partisans' biased views of their opponents.
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Moral Masochism: On the Connection Between Guilt and Self-Punishment
Yoel Inbar et al.
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do people sometimes seek to atone for their transgressions by harming themselves physically? The current results suggest that they do. People who wrote about a past guilt-inducing event inflicted more intense electric shocks on themselves than did those who wrote about feeling sad or about a neutral event. Moreover, the stronger the shocks that guilty participants administered to themselves, the more their feelings of guilt were alleviated. We discuss how this method of atonement relates to other methods examined in previous research.
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Personality and Political Orientation: Meta-Analysis and test of a Threat-Constraint Model
Chris Sibley, Danny Osborne & John Duckitt
Journal of Research in Personality, forthcoming
Abstract:
We synthesized and meta-analyzed 73 studies (N = 71,895) examining the associations between Big-Five personality and single-item self-placement measures of political orientation. Openness to Experience (r = -.18) and Conscientiousness (r = .10) were significantly but weakly correlated with political conservatism. The weak Openness-political orientation link was moderated by systemic threat and uncertainty (indexed by nation-wide homicide and unemployment). We propose a Threat-Constraint Model explaining this previously undetected Person x Situation interaction. The model shows that there was a moderately-sized negative correlation between Openness and political conservatism when systemic threat was low (r = -.422) but that this association was negligible at only moderate levels of threat (r = -.066). These findings highlight the situational constraints of personality-political ideology associations.
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When Colors Backfire: The Impact of Color Cues on Moral Judgment
Tine De Bock, Mario Pandelaere & Patrick Van Kenhove
Journal of Consumer Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article investigates if and how the valence of color cues affects moral acceptability of (un)desirable consumer behaviors. Study 1 uses colors with definite differences in terms of valence, namely, red and green. Study 2 applies an evaluative conditioning paradigm to endow initially neutral colors with negative versus positive valences. We find an ironic color effect: undesirable behaviors become more acceptable when presented with negatively valenced colors. In general, respondents find (un)desirable behaviors more acceptable when a background color is of the same valence rather than neutral or opposite in valence. Implications for promotion and prevention campaigns are discussed.
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Construal levels and moral judgment: Some complications
Han Gong & Douglas Medin
Judgment and Decision Making, September 2012, Pages 628-638
Abstract:
Eyal, T., Liberman, N., & Trope, Y., (2008). Judging near and distant virtue and vice. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1204-1209, explored how psychological distance influences moral judgment and found that more extreme moral appraisals were given to distal behaviors rather than proximal behaviors. Contrary to Eyal et al., the current paper presents converging evidence showing that moral judgments become more extreme at lowerlevel construals compared to higher-level construals. In four experiments using two different priming techniques, we manipulated construal levels and assessed their effects on moral judgment. High-level consturals elicited less moral outrage toward transgressions and less positive ratings of virtuous behaviors than low-level construals. A replication study was also conducted to reconcile the inconsistencies between the current results and those of Eyal et al. Possible explanations for the different results between two studies are discussed.
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Lifting the Veil of Morality: Choice Blindness and Attitude Reversals on a Self-Transforming Survey
Lars Hall, Petter Johansson & Thomas Strandberg
PloS ONE, September 2012
Abstract:
Every day, thousands of polls, surveys, and rating scales are employed to elicit the attitudes of humankind. Given the ubiquitous use of these instruments, it seems we ought to have firm answers to what is measured by them, but unfortunately we do not. To help remedy this situation, we present a novel approach to investigate the nature of attitudes. We created a self-transforming paper survey of moral opinions, covering both foundational principles, and current dilemmas hotly debated in the media. This survey used a magic trick to expose participants to a reversal of their previously stated attitudes, allowing us to record whether they were prepared to endorse and argue for the opposite view of what they had stated only moments ago. The result showed that the majority of the reversals remained undetected, and a full 69% of the participants failed to detect at least one of two changes. In addition, participants often constructed coherent and unequivocal arguments supporting the opposite of their original position. These results suggest a dramatic potential for flexibility in our moral attitudes, and indicates a clear role for self-attribution and post-hoc rationalization in attitude formation and change.
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The Problem with Self-Forgiveness: Forgiving the Self Deters Readiness to Change Among Gamblers
Erinn Squires et al.
Journal of Gambling Studies, September 2012, Pages 337-350
Abstract:
Self-forgiveness is generally understood to be a mechanism that restores and improves the self. In the current study, we examine the possible deleterious consequences of forgiving the self among gamblers - specifically in regard to gamblers' readiness to change their problematic behavior. At a large Canadian university, 110 young adult gamblers' level of gambling pathology was assessed, along with their readiness to change and self-forgiveness for their gambling. Participants were 33 females and 75 males (2 unspecified) with a mean age of 20.33. Results revealed that level of pathology (at risk vs. problem gamblers) significantly predicted increased readiness to change. Self-forgiveness mediated this relationship, such that level of gambling pathology increased readiness to change to the extent that participants were relatively unforgiving of their gambling. Implications for seeking professional assistance as well as treatment and recovery are discussed.
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Danny Osborne & Chris Sibley
Journal of Research in Personality, forthcoming
Abstract:
Though psychologists show that personality predicts socio-political attitudes, political scientists caution that most voters are incapable of such disciplined voting. We integrate these competing traditions by arguing that personality correlates with vote choice, but primarily among the politically sophisticated. Utilizing two nationally-representative datasets (Study 1: n = 6,518; Study 2: n = 17,434) from two countries (New Zealand and the United States, respectively), we show that Openness to Experience is inversely associated with conservative vote choice (Studies 1-2) and socio-political attitudes (Study 2). As predicted, these relationships were particularly robust among the politically sophisticated. These studies provide a much-needed qualification to the literature and demonstrate the benefits of using an interdisciplinary approach when examining the personality correlates of socio-political attitudes.
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Adam Feltz & Edward Cokely
Review of Philosophy and Psychology, September 2012, Pages 335-350
Abstract:
It is commonly claimed that fully virtuous individuals cannot be ignorant and that everyday intuitions support this fact. Others maintain that there are virtues of ignorance and most people recognize them. Both views cannot be correct. We report evidence from three experiments suggesting that ignorance does not rule out folk attributions of virtue. Additionally, results show that many of these judgments can be predicted by one's emotional stability - a heritable personality trait. We argue that these results are philosophically important for the study of virtue and we discuss some of the ways individual differences may inform and facilitate current debates in ethics. We close with a cautionary argument detailing the risks of discounting some intuitions simply because they are associated with seemingly less desirable personality traits.
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Atypical moral judgment following traumatic brain injury
Ana Martins et al.
Judgment and Decision Making, July 2012, Pages 478-487
Abstract:
Previous research has shown an association between emotions, particularly social emotions, and moral judgments. Some studies suggested an association between blunted emotion and the utilitarian moral judgments observed in patients with prefrontal lesions. In order to investigate how prefrontal brain damage affects moral judgment, we asked a sample of 29 TBI patients (12 females and 17 males) and 41 healthy participants (16 females and 25 males) to judge 22 hypothetical dilemmas split into three different categories (non-moral, impersonal and personal moral). The TBI group presented a higher proportion of affirmative (utilitarian) responses for personal moral dilemmas when compared to controls, suggesting an atypical pattern of utilitarian judgements. We also found a negative association between the performance on recognition of social emotions and the proportion of affirmative responses on personal moral dilemmas. These results suggested that the preference for utilitarian responses in this type of dilemmas is accompanied by difficulties in social emotion recognition. Overall, our findings suggest that deontological moral judgments are associated with normal social emotion processing and that frontal lobe plays an important role in both emotion and moral judgment.
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Utilitarian moral judgment in psychopathy
Michael Koenigs et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, August 2012, Pages 708-714
Abstract:
Psychopathic behavior is characteristically amoral, but to date research studies have largely failed to identify any systematic differences in moral judgment capability between psychopaths and non-psychopaths. In this study, we investigate whether significant differences in moral judgment emerge when taking into account the phenotypic heterogeneity of the disorder through a well-validated distinction between psychopathic subtypes. Three groups of incarcerated participants [low-anxious psychopaths (n = 12), high-anxious psychopaths (n = 12) and non-psychopaths (n = 24)] completed a moral judgment test involving hypothetical dilemmas. The moral dilemmas featured ‘personal' (i.e. involving direct physical harm) or ‘impersonal' (i.e. involving indirect or remote harm) actions. Compared to non-psychopaths, both groups of psychopaths were significantly more likely to endorse the impersonal actions. However, only the low-anxious psychopaths were significantly more likely to endorse the personal harms when commission of the harm would maximize aggregate welfare - the ‘utilitarian' choice. High-anxious psychopaths and non-psychopaths did not significantly differ in their personal moral judgments. These results provide novel laboratory evidence of abnormal moral judgment in psychopaths, as well as additional support for the importance of considering psychopathic subtypes.
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When psychopathy impairs moral judgments: Neural responses during judgments about causing fear
Abigail Marsh & Elise Cardinale
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Psychopathy is a disorder characterized by reduced empathy, shallow affect, and behaviors that cause victims distress, like threats, bullying, and violence. Neuroimaging research in both institutionalized and community samples implicates amygdala dysfunction in the etiology of psychopathic traits. Reduced amygdala responsiveness may disrupt processing of fear-relevant stimuli like fearful facial expressions. The present study links amygdala dysfunction in response to fear-relevant stimuli to the willingness of individuals with psychopathic traits to cause fear in other people. Thirty-three healthy adult participants varying in psychopathic traits underwent whole-brain fMRI scanning while they viewed statements that selectively evoke anger, disgust, fear, happiness, or sadness. During scanning, participants judged whether it is morally acceptable to make each statement to another person. Psychopathy was associated with reduced activity in right amygdala during judgments of fear-evoking statements and with more lenient moral judgments about causing fear. No group differences in amygdala function or moral judgments emerged for other emotion categories. Psychopathy was also associated with increased activity in middle frontal gyrus (BA 10) during the task. These results implicate amygdala dysfunction in impaired judgments about causing distress in psychopathy, and suggest that atypical amygdala responses to fear in psychopathy extend across multiple classes of stimuli.
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Rafik Beekun & James Westerman
Journal of Business Ethics, September 2012, Pages 33-44
Abstract:
We investigate the cross-cultural relationships between spirituality and ethical decision-making in Norway and the U.S. Data were collected from business students (n = 149) at state universities in Norway and the U.S. Results indicate that intention to behave ethically was significantly related to spirituality, national culture, and the influence of peers. Americans were significantly less ethical than Norwegians based on the three dimensions of ethics, yet more spiritual overall. Interestingly, the more spiritual were Norwegians, the more ethical was their decision-making. By contrast, the more spiritual were Americans, the less ethical was their decision-making. The research also found that peer influences were more important to Norwegians than to Americans in making ethical decisions. Finally, spiritual people from the U.S. were more likely to use a universalistic form of justice ethics, as opposed to a more particularistic form of justice ethics used by Norwegians.
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The Role of Victims' Emotions in Preschoolers' Moral Judgments
Deena Skolnick Weisberg & Alan Leslie
Review of Philosophy and Psychology, September 2012, Pages 439-455
Abstract:
Do victims' emotions underlie preschoolers' moral judgment abilities? Study 1 asked preschoolers (n = 72) to judge actions directed at characters who could and could not feel hurt and who did and did not cry. These judgments took into account only the nature of the action, not the nature of the victim. To further investigate how victims' emotions might impact children's moral judgments, Study 2 presented preschoolers (n = 37) with stories that varied in transgression type (Moral, Conventional, or None) and victim's reaction (Crying Present or Crying Absent). As in Study 1, children's judgments were affected primarily by transgression type, and not by emotion. In an analogous task, judgments of children with autism spectrum disorders (Study 3; n = 12) were affected by both transgression type and crying. Typically developing children's moral judgments are thus concerned primarily with action type, not with emotional displays, but the judgments of children with autism spectrum disorders can be swayed by victims' emotions.