Whose Problem
Intertemporal Empathy Decline: Feeling Less Distress for Future Others' Suffering
Matthew Coleman & David DeSteno
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present actions of individuals and society at large can cause outsized consequences on future generations' quality of life. Moral philosophers have explored how people should value the well-being of future generations. Yet, the question of how people actually feel when considering the plight of others in the future compared to the present remains understudied. In four experiments (N = 4,698), we demonstrate evidence of an intertemporal empathy decline such that people feel less empathy toward another person's suffering in the future compared to the present (Studies 1-4) despite predicting that the same amount of pain would be felt (Studies 1-2). Despite this, imagining another person's suffering in the future leads to placing greater value on future generations' welfare (Study 2). We also show that this intertemporal empathy decline reduces the amount people donate to a future-oriented versus present-oriented charity of the same type (Study 3). Finally, we find that prompting people to more vividly imagine another person's future suffering attenuates the decline in intertemporal empathy (Study 4). Together, this research identifies empathy as a present-biased psychological obstacle impeding future-oriented prosocial behavior.
Fulfilling moral duty or prioritizing moral image? The moral self-regulatory consequences of ethical voice
Lei Huang et al.
Journal of Applied Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research on the consequences of ethical voice has largely focused on the performance or social relational consequences of ethical voice on multiple organizational stakeholders. The present research provides an important extension to the ethical voice literature by investigating the distinct intrapersonal and interpersonal moral self-regulatory processes that shape ethical voicers' own psychological experiences and their subsequent purposeful efforts to maintain a positive sense of moral self. On one hand, we argue that ethical voice heightens voicers' sense of responsibility over ethical matters at work (i.e., moral ownership), which motivates them to refrain from violating moral norms (i.e., disengaging from unethical behaviors). On the contrary, we argue that ethical voice generates psychological pressure for voicers as they become anxious about preserving their moral social image (i.e., moral reputation maintenance concerns), which motivates them to signal their moral character to others through symbolic acts (i.e., engaging in moral symbolization behaviors). Further, we expect gender differences in the moral consequences of ethical voice. Across two studies that varied in temporal focus (a multisource, time-lagged field study and a within-person weekly experience sampling study), we found support for most of our predictions. The results suggest that while potentially psychologically uplifting (for both men and women), ethical voice also generates psychological pressure for the voicer to preserve their favorable moral social image and thus motivates them (more so in the case of women voicers at the between-person level) to explicitly symbolize their moral character in the workplace.
Modest Victims: Victims Who Decline to Broadcast Their Victimization Are Seen As Morally Virtuous
Nathan Dhaliwal, Jillian Jordan & Pat Barclay
Harvard Working Paper, August 2024
Abstract:
What do people think of victims who conceal their victimhood? We propose that the decision to not broadcast that one has been victimized serves as a costly act of modesty -- in doing so, one is potentially forgoing social support and compensation from one's community. We posit that individuals who are less demanding and more cooperative are more willing to forego these benefits, such that burying one's victimhood can serve as a costly signal of virtue. Through a mathematical model, and five empirical studies conducted on Prolific Academic and a university subject pool (total n = 2896), we support the hypothesis that people who decide not to advertise their victim status can be perceived as more cooperative social partners. Moreover, we find that the reputation benefits of burying versus broadcasting can persist even when broadcasting can function to warn other potential victims of an ongoing threat (Study 2), and in contexts where broadcasting would elicit sympathy from observers (Study 3). Interestingly, however, we find that the reputation costs of broadcasting can be mitigated when broadcasting is directed at a smaller audience of close ties (versus a broader audience that includes weak ties) (Study 4). We also find that buriers are seen as less demanding than broadcasters (Study 4), and provide evidence that attributions of reduced demandingness may underlie preferences for buriers: when participants have access to direct information about a victim's level of demandingness, the reputation benefits of burying relative to broadcasting are attenuated (Study 5). Together, this research suggests that declining to broadcast one's status as a victim is perceived as a costly signal of virtue.
Rejecting an Intergroup Apology Attenuates Perceived Differences Between Victim and Perpetrator Groups in Morality and Power
Fiona Kazarovytska & Roland Imhoff
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Intergroup crimes are a ubiquitous element of our political reality, as are attempts to redress these crimes through apologies. Six experiments (N = 2,432) demonstrate that the victim group's response to an offered apology has the power to shape uninvolved third parties' impressions of the conflicting groups and influence their willingness to support the victim group. Across a variety of intergroup contexts, a victim group's apology rejection attenuated perceived differences between the victim and perpetrator groups by diminishing the morality but increasing the power of the victim group while simultaneously reducing the power of the perpetrator group in the eyes of third parties (Experiments 1-4). These judgments, particularly the less favorable morality judgments of the victim group, suppressed the allocation of valued goods (Experiment 3a), political support (Experiments 3b-4), and actual donations (Experiment 4) granted to the victim group. Regarding the social costs imposed on the perpetrator group, we found mixed evidence. Taken together, these findings highlight the relevance of victim group responses in navigating posttransgression reactions and offer implications for understanding apologetic interactions from the perspective of uninvolved observers.
Do moral values change with the seasons?
Ian Hohm, Brian O'Shea & Mark Schaller
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 13 August 2024
Abstract:
Moral values guide consequential attitudes and actions. Here, we report evidence of seasonal variation in Americans' endorsement of some -- but not all -- moral values. Studies 1 and 2 examined a decade of data from the United States (total N = 232,975) and produced consistent evidence of a biannual seasonal cycle in values pertaining to loyalty, authority, and purity ("binding" moral values) -- with strongest endorsement in spring and autumn and weakest endorsement in summer and winter -- but not in values pertaining to care and fairness ("individualizing" moral values). Study 2 also provided some evidence that the summer decrease, but not the winter decrease, in binding moral value endorsement was stronger in regions with greater seasonal extremity. Analyses on an additional year of US data (study 3; n = 24,199) provided further replication and showed that this biannual seasonal cycle cannot be easily dismissed as a sampling artifact. Study 4 provided a partial explanation for the biannual seasonal cycle in Americans' endorsement of binding moral values by showing that it was predicted by an analogous seasonal cycle in Americans' experience of anxiety. Study 5 tested the generalizability of the primary findings and found similar seasonal cycles in endorsement of binding moral values in Canada and Australia (but not in the United Kingdom). Collectively, results from these five studies provide evidence that moral values change with the seasons, with intriguing implications for additional outcomes that can be affected by those values (e.g., intergroup prejudices, political attitudes, legal judgments).
Markets and morality: How markets shape our (dis)regard for others
Daniel Chen & Eric Reinhart
Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars since Hume and Smith have debated possible causal connections between market experiences and moral beliefs. Here, we study the impact of market interactions on utilitarian versus deontological values, charitable donations, and whether individuals have differential in-group/out-group moral views. We randomly assign workers residing across several nations of varying income levels to different market conditions and found that, in low-income nations, tournament-based compensation increased deontological commitments, especially toward out-group members, and donations by productive workers, but decreased donations by less productive workers. In higher-income nations, the effect on deontological commitments reversed, while effects on out-group attitudes and donations became insignificant. These findings suggest that if utilitarian attitudes lead to more market-oriented policies, then multiple steady states arise wherein some countries sustain high levels of utilitarian attitudes and economic growth alongside progressively weakening deontological commitments and interpersonal regard for others, putting economic rationality and liberal moral development at odds.
Venting makes people prefer -- and preferentially support -- us over those we vent about
Jaimie Arona Krems et al.
Evolution and Human Behavior, September 2024
Abstract:
People vent, as when airing grievances about one mutual friend to another. Contrary to a Freudian account, such social venting does not alleviate anger. So, what function might it serve? That people bestow more and more likely support on relatively better-liked friends -- support which is associated with greater health, happiness, and economic mobility -- highlights a largely overlooked challenge in social groups: competing within the group for certain group members' affections and support. Social venting might be one effective tool for meeting this challenge. We test this -- and also compare venting's efficacy with other forms of communication, including a well-studied tactic of partner competition (competitor derogation). In six experiments with U.S. CloudResearch participants (N = 1723), venting causes listeners (people vented to) to prefer venters over targets (people vented about) and to preferentially benefit better-liked venters over targets in a modified Dictator Game. By obscuring the venters' intent to aggress against the target, venting might communicate target-harming information in a way that buffers venters from being perceived unfavorably. Effective venting might thus manipulate listeners' attitudes and behavior in venters' favor.
Euphemism as a powerful framing device that influences moral judgments and punitive responses after wrongdoing
Matthew Stanley & Christopher Neck
Journal of Applied Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Euphemism -- that is, softening words or phrases substituted for more direct language -- has become pervasive in our everyday personal and professional lives. Leveraging theory and research on construal and framing effects, we conceptualize euphemism as a linguistic framing device that influences how observers construe situations and the people, groups, objects, and events within them. We then experimentally investigate the effects of euphemism as a linguistic framing device on third-party judgments about moral transgressions (i.e., bribery, fraud). Across studies (total N = 3,081) we find consistent evidence that employing euphemistic labels (relative to their noneuphemistic analogs) reduces the perceived severity of moral transgressions and, as a result, also reduces third-party motivations to punish transgressors. Overt experimental manipulations to reconstrue euphemistic labels into their noneuphemistic forms reduced, but did not entirely eliminate, the effects on moral severity and punishment judgments. Participants did not sufficiently adjust their judgments. These findings underscore the power of simple linguistic manipulations in influencing public opinion, and they have important implications for the possibility of creating a more just and fair society.
Deviant Cohesion and Unauthorized Atrocities: Evidence from the American War in Vietnam
Marek Brzezinski
Perspectives on Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why do soldiers engage in unauthorized atrocities? This article explores this question by analyzing the use of postmortem mutilation by American soldiers during the Vietnam War. I show that such acts were remarkably frequent, despite being explicitly prohibited by military policy, and argue that individual-level variation in participation in such violence is explained by social dynamics within military units. Soldiers used mutilation mostly as a means of avenging enemy atrocities or deaths among comrades. Revenge motives were stronger when soldiers shared particularly strong social bonds. Whether these motives resulted in unauthorized atrocity, however, depended on the extent to which discipline was maintained within military units. In units characterized by "deviant cohesion" -- strong social ties and weak discipline -- informal combatant norms diverged from organizational policies and promoted unauthorized atrocities as a unit-level practice. Evidence for this theory comes from a combination of archival sources and survey data gathered from a representative sample of Vietnam War veterans. A case study of a single Army unit illustrates the mechanism implied by the theory.
The impact of group size on giving versus demand for redistribution
Johanna Mollerstrom, Avner Strulov-Shlain & Dmitry Taubinsky
Journal of Public Economics, September 2024
Abstract:
We report the results of an online experiment studying preferences for giving and preferences for group-wide redistribution in small (4-person) and large (200-person) groups. We find that the desire to engage in voluntary giving decreases significantly with (perceived) group size. However, voting for group-wide redistribution is precisely estimated to not depend on group size. Moreover, people's perceptions of what constitutes the relevant group are malleable, and affect their desire to give. These results suggest that government programs, such as progressive tax-and-transfer systems, can help satisfy other-regarding preferences for redistribution in a way that creating opportunities for voluntary giving cannot.