No offense
The Illusion of Moral Superiority
Ben Tappin & Ryan McKay
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Most people strongly believe they are just, virtuous, and moral; yet regard the average person as distinctly less so. This invites accusations of irrationality in moral judgment and perception — but direct evidence of irrationality is absent. Here, we quantify this irrationality and compare it against the irrationality in other domains of positive self-evaluation. Participants (N = 270) judged themselves and the average person on traits reflecting the core dimensions of social perception: morality, agency, and sociability. Adapting new methods, we reveal that virtually all individuals irrationally inflated their moral qualities, and the absolute and relative magnitude of this irrationality was greater than that in the other domains of positive self-evaluation. Inconsistent with prevailing theories of overly positive self-belief, irrational moral superiority was not associated with self-esteem. Taken together, these findings suggest that moral superiority is a uniquely strong and prevalent form of “positive illusion,” but the underlying function remains unknown.
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Facial-width-to-height ratio predicts perceptions of integrity in males
Margaret Ormiston, Elaine Wong & Michael Haselhuhn
Personality and Individual Differences, 15 January 2017, Pages 40–42
Abstract:
People rapidly make attributions of others' personality, cognitive abilities, and intentions based on facial appearance alone, which in turn, can have consequential outcomes. One objective measure of facial structure, the facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), has been linked to perceptions of trustworthiness such that wider-faced men are perceived as less trustworthy than narrower-faced men. In the current study we aimed to extend our understanding of this finding by exploring how fWHR relates to three key components of perceived trustworthiness: perceived ability, perceived benevolence, and perceived integrity. We found that narrower-faced individuals were more often perceived as possessing greater integrity than wider-faced individuals, whereas neither narrower nor wider-faced individuals were perceived as possessing greater ability or benevolence. These findings have implications for research on perceived trustworthiness, facial appearance and impression management.
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Matthew Grizzard et al.
Media Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous studies have indicated that media consumption may influence moral intuition sensitivity. The present exploratory studies sought to expand on these findings by employing a three-phase, longitudinal experiment conducted over nine weeks, where participants were exposed to two genres of films (romance, action) mixed in various ratios (high = 100% romance, medium = 60% romance, low = 20% romance, none = 0% romance). Findings from the initial study indicate that repeated exposure to romantic films led to increases in sensitivity for four of the five moral intuitions (i.e., care, fairness, authority, purity); at the same time, any exposure to action films seemed to erode these changes. A follow-up post-hoc content analysis sought to confirm these findings and test an operationalization of “moral conditioning.” We discuss the results in regards to media entertainment theory and research, and the societal implications of the role of media entertainment to reinforce standards of moral judgment.
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Political ideology predicts involvement in crime
John Paul Wright et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Political ideology represents an imperfect yet important indicator of a host of personality traits and cognitive preferences. These preferences, in turn, seemingly propel liberals and conservatives towards divergent life-course experiences. Criminal behavior represents one particular domain of conduct where differences rooted in political ideology may exist. Using a national dataset, we test whether and to what extent political ideology is predictive of self-reported criminal behavior. Our results show that self-identified political ideology is monotonically related to criminal conduct cross-sectionally and prospectively and that liberals self-report more criminal conduct than do conservatives. We discuss potential causal mechanisms relating political ideology to individual conduct.
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Moralization Through Moral Shock: Exploring Emotional Antecedents to Moral Conviction
Daniel Wisneski & Linda Skitka
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current research tested whether exposure to disgusting images increases moral conviction and whether this happens in the presence of incidental disgust cues versus disgust cues relevant to the target of moralization. Across two studies, we exposed participants to one of the four sets of disgusting versus control images to test the moralization of abortion attitudes: pictures of aborted fetuses, animal abuse, non-harm related disgusting images, harm related disgusting images, or neutral pictures, at either sub- or supraliminal levels of awareness. Moral conviction about abortion increased (compared with control) only for participants exposed to abortion-related images at speeds slow enough to allow conscious awareness. Study 2 replicated this finding, and found that the relationship between attitudinally relevant disgust and moral conviction was mediated by disgust, and not anger or harm appraisals. Findings are discussed in terms of their relevance for intuitionist theories of morality and moral theories that emphasize harm.
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Sex differences in attention to disgust facial expressions
Morganne Kraines, Lucas Kelberer & Tony Wells
Cognition and Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research demonstrates that women experience disgust more readily and with more intensity than men. The experience of disgust is associated with increased attention to disgust-related stimuli, but no prior study has examined sex differences in attention to disgust facial expressions. We hypothesised that women, compared to men, would demonstrate increased attention to disgust facial expressions. Participants (n = 172) completed an eye tracking task to measure visual attention to emotional facial expressions. Results indicated that women spent more time attending to disgust facial expressions compared to men. Unexpectedly, we found that men spent significantly more time attending to neutral faces compared to women. The findings indicate that women’s increased experience of emotional disgust also extends to attention to disgust facial stimuli. These findings may help to explain sex differences in the experience of disgust and in diagnoses of anxiety disorders in which disgust plays an important role.
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The spark that ignites: Mere exposure to rivals increases Machiavellianism and unethical behavior
Gavin Kilduff & Adam Galinsky
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Rivalry is prevalent across many competitive environments and differs in important ways from non-rival competition. Here, we draw upon research on significant relationships, relational schemas, and automatic goals to explore whether mere exposure to or recall of a rival can be sufficient to increase individuals' Machiavellianism and unethical behavior, even in contexts where their rivals are not present. Across four experiments, we found that activation of the rivalry relational schema led to increased Machiavellianism (Experiments 1 and 2), false inflation of performance (Experiment 3), and deception of an online counterpart for self-gain (Experiment 4). In Experiment 4 we also observed an interaction between rivalry and moral identity such that when the rivalry relational schema was activated, moral identity no longer safeguarded against unethical behavior. This finding suggests that a rivalry mindset crowds out moral identity as a guide to behavior. Overall, the current research depicts rivalry as an important relationship that activates a unique mindset and has a more widespread influence on behavior than prior research has suggested.
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Nathan Pettit et al.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, November 2016, Pages 172–183
Abstract:
This research examines how being faced with a potential negative versus positive status change influences peoples’ willingness to ethically transgress to avoid or achieve these respective outcomes. Across four studies people were consistently more likely to cheat to prevent a negative status change than to realize a positive change. We argue that what accounts for these results is the enhanced value placed on retaining one’s status in the face of a potential negative change. Taken together, these findings offer a dynamic perspective to the study of status and ethics and contribute to knowledge of the situational factors that promote unethical behavior.
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The brain adapts to dishonesty
Neil Garrett et al.
Nature Neuroscience, December 2016, Pages 1727–1732
Abstract:
Dishonesty is an integral part of our social world, influencing domains ranging from finance and politics to personal relationships. Anecdotally, digressions from a moral code are often described as a series of small breaches that grow over time. Here we provide empirical evidence for a gradual escalation of self-serving dishonesty and reveal a neural mechanism supporting it. Behaviorally, we show that the extent to which participants engage in self-serving dishonesty increases with repetition. Using functional MRI, we show that signal reduction in the amygdala is sensitive to the history of dishonest behavior, consistent with adaptation. Critically, the extent of reduced amygdala sensitivity to dishonesty on a present decision relative to the previous one predicts the magnitude of escalation of self-serving dishonesty on the next decision. The findings uncover a biological mechanism that supports a 'slippery slope': what begins as small acts of dishonesty can escalate into larger transgressions.
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Lying About Luck versus Lying About Performance
Agne Kajackaite
University of Southern California Working Paper, October 2016
Abstract:
I compare lying behavior in a real-effort task in which participants have control over outcomes and a task in which outcomes are determined by pure luck. Participants lie significantly more in the random-draw task than in the real-effort task, leading to the conclusion lying about luck is intrinsically less costly than lying about performance.
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Two- Rather Than One-Way Streets: Agents As Causal Forces In Principals’ Unethical Decisions
Long Wang & Keith Murnighan
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, December 2016, Pages 217–227
Abstract:
Models of diffusion of responsibility suggest that principals will avoid direct moral responsibility by hiring agents to act unethically on their behalf. The current research goes beyond the research on the diffusion of responsibility by investigating the influence of agents’ character on principals’ moral choices. Study 1 allowed principals to choose an honest or dishonest agent. The results indicated that having the opportunity to choose dishonest agents, regardless of the agents’ ultimate intentions for their previous lies, increased the likelihood that principals would subsequently hire the agents to lie on their behalf to harm others. Study 2 was designed to avoid potential self-selection effects by randomly pairing principals and agents; it found that observing agents telling harmful black lies or seemingly harmless white lies led to increased immoral actions by their principals. Our results contribute to the literatures on moral diffusion and principal-agent relationships by revealing some of the inherent dynamics in the principal-agent moral interactions.
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Ying Tang & Leonard Newman
Social Influence, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two studies examine a possible consequence – namely, unwanted reactions to psychological research on wrongdoing – if laypeople perceive psychologists to have liberal tendencies. Study 1 replicated previous research by showing that when psychologists presented findings demonstrating situational (compared to dispositional or interactionist) influences on wrongdoing, they were perceived as assigning less responsibility to perpetrators. Further, this effect was stronger among participants who perceived psychologists to be politically liberal. Study 2 revealed that when psychologists were explicitly identified as liberals, participants believed they would downplay perpetrator responsibility across the board, but particularly when the responsibility attributional account was situational. Psychologists should be aware that laypeople’s perception of their political leanings could lead to discrepant construal of psychologists’ actual perspectives on human behavior.
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Christopher Bauman, Leigh Plunkett Tost & Madeline Ong
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, November 2016, Pages 123–141
Abstract:
Do bad role models exonerate others’ unethical behavior? Based on social learning theory and psychological theories of blame, we predicted that unethical behavior by higher-ranking individuals changes how people respond to lower-ranking individuals who subsequently commit the same transgression. Five studies explored when and why this rank-dependent imitation effect occurs. Across all five studies, we found that people were less punitive when low-ranking transgressors imitated high-ranking members of their organization. However, imitation only reduced punishment when the two transgressors were from the same organization (Study 2), when the transgressions were highly similar (Study 3), and when it was unclear whether the initial transgressor was punished (Study 5). Results also indicated that imitation affects punishment because it influences whom people blame for the transgression. These findings reveal actor-observer differences in social learning and identify a way that unethical behavior spreads through organizations.