Ethos
Armin Falk & Nora Szech
Science, 10 May 2013, Pages 707-711
Abstract:
The possibility that market interaction may erode moral values is a long-standing, but controversial, hypothesis in the social sciences, ethics, and philosophy. To date, empirical evidence on decay of moral values through market interaction has been scarce. We present controlled experimental evidence on how market interaction changes how human subjects value harm and damage done to third parties. In the experiment, subjects decide between either saving the life of a mouse or receiving money. We compare individual decisions to those made in a bilateral and a multilateral market. In both markets, the willingness to kill the mouse is substantially higher than in individual decisions. Furthermore, in the multilateral market, prices for life deteriorate tremendously. In contrast, for morally neutral consumption choices, differences between institutions are small.
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The Fluctuating Female Vote: Politics, Religion, and the Ovulatory Cycle
Kristina Durante, Ashley Rae & Vladas Griskevicius
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Each month, many women experience an ovulatory cycle that regulates fertility. Although research has found that this cycle influences women's mating preferences, we proposed that it might also change women's political and religious views. Building on theory suggesting that political and religious orientation are linked to reproductive goals, we tested how fertility influenced women's politics, religiosity, and voting in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. In two studies with large and diverse samples, ovulation had drastically different effects on single women and women in committed relationships. Ovulation led single women to become more liberal, less religious, and more likely to vote for Barack Obama. In contrast, ovulation led women in committed relationships to become more conservative, more religious, and more likely to vote for Mitt Romney. In addition, ovulation-induced changes in political orientation mediated women's voting behavior. Overall, the ovulatory cycle not only influences women's politics but also appears to do so differently for single women than for women in relationships.
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Zachary Rothschild et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Integrating research on intergroup emotions and scapegoating, we propose that moral outrage toward an outgroup perceived to be unjustly harming another outgroup can represent a motivated displacement of blame that reduces collective guilt over ingroup harm-doing. We tested this hypothesis by manipulating the purported cause of working-class Americans' suffering (ingroup cause vs. unknown cause vs. outgroup cause) and whether a potential scapegoat target (i.e., illegal immigrants) was portrayed as a viable or nonviable alternative source of this harm. Supporting hypotheses, participants primed with ingroup culpability for working-class harm (versus other sources) reported increased moral outrage and support for retributive action toward immigrants when immigrants were portrayed as a viable source of that harm, but reported increased collective guilt and support for reparative action when immigrants were portrayed as a nonviable source of that harm. Effects on retributive and reparative action were differentially mediated by moral outrage and collective guilt, respectively.
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Daniel Randles, Steven Heine & Nathan Santos
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The meaning-maintenance model posits that any violation of expectations leads to an affective experience that motivates compensatory affirmation. We explore whether the neural mechanism that responds to meaning threats can be inhibited by acetaminophen, in the same way that acetaminophen inhibits physical pain or the distress caused by social rejection. In two studies, participants received either acetaminophen or a placebo and were provided with either an unsettling experience or a control experience. In Study 1, participants wrote about either their death or a control topic. In Study 2, participants watched either a surrealist film clip or a control film clip. In both studies, participants in the meaning-threat condition who had taken a placebo showed typical compensatory affirmations by becoming more punitive toward lawbreakers, whereas those who had taken acetaminophen, and those in the control conditions, did not.
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Marina Kouzakova et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Value-based conflicts are prone to escalation and rather insensitive to standard conflict resolution techniques. To understand why this is the case, we assessed self-regulatory and cardiovascular (CV) responses to test how people cope with conflict, depending on whether values versus resources are at stake. Our results show that a value conflict induces a CV threat profile and raises a prevention focus. Conversely, a resource conflict induces a CV challenge profile and decreases prevention focus. These results suggest that value conflicts are linked to more prevention-focused motivational profiles than resource conflicts. This knowledge can foster the development of specific strategies to facilitate resolution of value conflicts.
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Self-Serving Altruism? The Lure of Unethical Actions that Benefit Others
Francesca Gino, Shahar Ayal & Dan Ariely
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
In three experiments, we propose and find that individuals cheat more when others can benefit from their cheating and when the number of beneficiaries of wrongdoing increases. Our results indicate that people use moral flexibility to justify their self-interested actions when such actions benefit others in addition to the self. Namely, our findings suggest that when people's dishonesty would benefit others, they are more likely to view dishonesty as morally acceptable and thus feel less guilty about benefiting from cheating. We discuss the implications of these results for collaborations in the social realm.
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To end life or not to prolong life: The effect of message framing on attitudes toward euthanasia
Eyal Gamliel
Journal of Health Psychology, May 2013, Pages 693-703
Abstract:
People ascribe "euthanasia" different values and view it differently. This study hypothesized that a different framing of objectively the same euthanasia situations would affect people's attitudes toward it. Indeed, "positive" framing of euthanasia as not prolonging life resulted in more support for both passive and active euthanasia relative to "negative" framing of the objectively same situations as ending life. Two experiments replicated this pattern using either continuous measures of attitude or dichotomous measures of choice. The article offers two theoretical explanations for the effect of message framing on attitudes toward euthanasia, discusses implications of this effect, and suggests future research.
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Moral Contagion Effects in Everyday Interpersonal Encounters
Kendall Eskine, Ashley Novreske & Michelle Richards
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Are people's essences fully restricted to their physical forms, or can residues of their perceived character be transmitted to others by mere physical contact? The present research investigated the interpersonal effects of contagion in the context of immoral behavior. The findings from two experiments revealed that after participants came into both indirect and direct physical contact with a moral transgressor, they experienced more state guilt. Further, the effect was moderated by disgust sensitivity - namely, after touching an unethical person, those with high disgust sensitivity reported more guilt than those with low disgust sensitivity. This is the first research to demonstrate that physical contact with a morally tainted person can affect one's own immorality (i.e., guilt) and hence provides evidence for "moral transfer." These findings further highlight disgust sensitivity as an important mechanism undergirding psychological contagion. Implications for daily life and directions for future research are discussed.
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Marina Puzakova, Hyokjin Kwak & Joseph Rocereto
Journal of Marketing, May 2013, Pages 81-100
Abstract:
The brand relationship literature shows that the humanizing of brands and products generates more favorable consumer attitudes and thus enhances brand performance. However, the authors propose negative downstream consequences of brand humanization; that is, the anthropomorphization of a brand can negatively affect consumers' brand evaluations when the brand faces negative publicity caused by product wrongdoings. They find that consumers who believe in personality stability (i.e., entity theorists) view anthropomorphized brands that undergo negative publicity less favorably than nonanthropomorphized brands. In contrast, consumers who advocate personality malleability (i.e., incremental theorists) are less likely to devalue an anthropomorphized brand from a single instance of negative publicity. Finally, the authors explore three firm response strategies (i.e., denial, apology, and compensation) that can affect the evaluations of anthropomorphized brands for consumers with different implicit theory perspectives. They find that entity theorists have more difficulty in combating the adverse effects of brand anthropomorphization than incremental theorists. Furthermore, they demonstrate that compensation (vs. denial or apology) is the only effective response among entity theorists.
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Avoiding Lying: The Case of Delegated Deception
Sanjiv Erat
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
People do not always lie, even when lying increases their monetary payoffs. Still, even when lying is aversive, can hiring someone to lie for you allow a person to avoid the disutility from lying, while at the same time ensuring higher payoffs? The current article investigates this empirical question - the possibility of delegated deception - through a laboratory experiment. The results indicate that a significant fraction of people employ an agent (to lie) even when they could lie themselves. Moreover, the likelihood of delegating to an agent depends on the incentives, with more people choosing to delegate when the lie hurts to a greater extent the person being lied to. Finally, analysis of gender differences in the tendency to use an agent revealed that that women are more likely to delegate to an agent compared to men, especially so when the harm inflicted by the lie is larger.
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Morality and Its Relation to Political Ideology: The Role of Promotion and Prevention Concerns
James Cornwell & Tory Higgins
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Our research investigated whether promotion concerns with advancement and prevention concerns with security related to moral beliefs and political ideology. Study 1 found that chronic prevention and promotion focus had opposite relations to binding foundation endorsement (as measured by the Moral Foundations Questionnaire), that is, positive for prevention and negative for promotion, and opposite relations to political ideology, that is, more conservative for prevention and more liberal for promotion, and the relation between focus and political ideology was partially mediated by binding foundation endorsement. Study 2 showed that promotion and prevention, even as situationally induced states, can contribute to differences in binding foundation endorsement, with prevention producing stronger endorsement (compared with a control) and promotion producing weaker endorsement.
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"Thou shalt not covet": Prohibitions, Temptation and Moral Values
Matteo Cervellati & Paolo Vanin
Journal of Public Economics, July 2013, Pages 15-28
Abstract:
This paper proposes a theory of the relationship between prohibitions and temptation. In presence of self-control problems, moral values may increase individual material welfare (and utility) by serving as a self-commitment device. The model investigates the relationship between morality and temptation, the individual gains from morality, the interaction between external sanctions and moral self-punishment and the spread and strength of individually optimal moral values. The empirical analysis, based on survey data for a large set of countries, documents a hump-shaped pattern of morality in social class, which supports the theoretical predictions of the model.
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Steven Ludeke, Wendy Johnson & Thomas Bouchard
Personality and Individual Differences, August 2013, Pages 375-380
Abstract:
Social attitudes, political attitudes and religiousness are highly inter-correlated. Furthermore, each is substantially influenced by genetic factors. Koenig and Bouchard (2006) hypothesized that these three areas (which they termed the Traditional Moral Values Triad) each derive from an underlying latent trait concerning the tendency to obey traditional authorities. We tested this hypothesis with data from a sample of twins raised in different homes. We assessed social attitudes with Altemeyer's (1988) Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale, political attitudes with Wilson and Patterson's (1968) Conservatism scale, and religiousness with Wiggins' (1966) Religious Fundamentalism scale. The best-fitting model identified the three TMVT domains as different manifestations of a single latent and significantly heritable factor. Further, the genetic and environmental bases for this factor overlapped heavily with those for the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire Traditionalism scale, supporting the conception of traditionalism as the latent factor represented by the three scales in contemporary Western societies.
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The Corruption of Value: Negative Moral Associations Diminish the Value of Money
Jennifer Stellar & Robb Willer
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate the possibility that negative moral associations can reduce the desirability and perceived value of money, and that they do so by threatening to contaminate individuals' perceptions of their morality. In Study 1, participants filled out fewer raffle tickets to obtain a money prize with immoral associations and perceived it to have less purchasing power than a morally neutral prize. In Study 2, we experimentally manipulated participants' moral self-image, reasoning that ameliorating moral self-image concerns would make participants less averse to accepting morally tainted money. Consistent with this, participants who recounted a past virtuous act completed more tasks to receive monetary payment with immoral associations than participants who recounted a neutral act. These findings provide experimental evidence that immoral associations reduce the desirability of morally tainted money by threatening to contaminate the recipient's moral self-image.