Good, bad, and ugly
Philosophers' biased judgments persist despite training, expertise and reflection
Eric Schwitzgebel & Fiery Cushman
Cognition, August 2015, Pages 127–137
Abstract:
We examined the effects of framing and order of presentation on professional philosophers' judgments about a moral puzzle case (the "trolley problem") and a version of the Tversky & Kahneman "Asian disease" scenario. Professional philosophers exhibited substantial framing effects and order effects, and were no less subject to such effects than was a comparison group of non-philosopher academic participants. Framing and order effects were not reduced by a forced delay during which participants were encouraged to consider "different variants of the scenario or different ways of describing the case". Nor were framing and order effects lower among participants reporting familiarity with the trolley problem or with loss-aversion framing effects, nor among those reporting having had a stable opinion on the issues before participating in the experiment, nor among those reporting expertise on the very issues in question. Thus, for these scenario types, neither framing effects nor order effects appear to be reduced even by high levels of academic expertise.
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Power Heightens Sensitivity to Unfairness Against the Self
Takuya Sawaoka, Brent Hughes & Nalini Ambady
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Power is accompanied by a sense of entitlement, which shapes reactions to self-relevant injustices. We propose that powerful people more strongly expect to be treated fairly and are faster to perceive unjust treatment that violates these expectations. After preliminary data demonstrated that power leads people to expect fair outcomes for themselves, we conducted four experiments. Participants primed with high (vs. low) power were faster to identify violations of distributive justice in which they were victims (Study 1). This effect was specific to self-relevant injustices (Study 2) and generalized to violations of interpersonal justice (Study 3). Finally, participants primed with high power were more likely to take action against unfair treatment (Study 4). These findings suggest a process by which hierarchies may be maintained: Whereas the powerless are comparatively less sensitive to unfair treatment, the powerful may retain their social standing by quickly perceiving and responding to self-relevant injustices.
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Daniel Ames & Alice Lee
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, September 2015, Pages 86–92
Abstract:
In the wake of recent revelations about US involvement in torture, and widespread and seemingly-growing support of torture in the US, we consider how people judge the value of information gained from informants under coercion. Drawing on past work on confirmation biases and moral judgments, we predicted, and found, that American torture supporters are more likely than opposers to see coerced information as relatively valuable and necessary in a scenario describing the foiling of an al-Qaeda terrorist attack. Judgments of coerced information value in the scenario also predicted endorsement of using the episode as a "success story" to justify torture in future cases. A second study shed light on an important boundary: Prior general support for torture predicted the perceived value of coerced information when the interrogated informant was an outgroup member (an al-Qaeda informant tortured by US operatives) but not when the informant was an ingroup member (an American soldier tortured by al-Qaeda). Overall, the results suggest that advocates for torture may readily interpret ambiguous evidence as implying the value and necessity of extreme interrogation techniques when used by the ingroup. Our findings also indicate that torture supporters often expect selective efficacy, whereby they see torture as more likely to yield valuable information when it is used by "us" compared to "them."
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The Impact of Power on Humanity: Self-Dehumanization in Powerlessness
Wenqi Yang et al.
PLoS ONE, May 2015
Abstract:
Power gives people the ability to control themselves and their environment, and this control is considered a fundamental human need. We investigated whether experiencing powerlessness induces the experience of self-dehumanization using three methods: priming, role-playing, and cueing. People in a position of low power viewed themselves (Experiments 1–3) as less human relative to people in a position of high power; furthermore, people with low power believed that they were viewed as less human by others as well (Experiments 2–3). In all of the experiments, human nature traits were most negatively affected by powerlessness in self-perception judgments, and uniquely human traits were most negatively affected by powerlessness in meta-perception judgments. Furthermore, the powerless believed they were viewed as less human not only by the powerful people but also the outside observers of the power dynamic. Self-dehumanization also appears to be a consequence of powerlessness rather than an incidental result of a change in mood or a negative self-view. Our findings are an important extension of previous work on the adverse effects of powerlessness and dehumanization.
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Historical group victimization entails moral obligations for descendants
Nyla Branscombe et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2015, Pages 118–129
Abstract:
When is greater morality expected of groups that have experienced intergroup victimization? Six experiments illustrate that meaning making for the victims, but not the perpetrators, can lead observers to perceive the victims' descendants as morally obligated to refrain from harming others. Focusing on the lessons of the past for the victim group increases observers' expectations that contemporary victim group members should know better than harm others. Deriving benefits from a group's past suffering, for both a well-known instance such as the Holocaust or a previously unknown group, elevates victim moral obligations (but not victim moral rights or perpetrator moral obligations). When the descendants of a historically victimized group violate the perceived lesson derived from having suffered — to be more moral — and instead does harm to others, then observers respond more negatively toward them than harm-doers who lack a victimization history.
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Why Leaders Punish: A Power Perspective
Marlon Mooijman et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We propose that power fundamentally changes why leaders punish and we develop a theoretical model that specifies how and why this occurs. Specifically, we argue that power increases the reliance on deterrence, but not just deserts, as a punishment motive and relate this to power fostering a distrustful mindset. We tested our model in 9 studies using different instantiations of power, different measurements and manipulations of distrust while measuring punishment motives and recommended punishments across a number of different situations. These 9 studies demonstrate that power fosters distrust and hereby increases both the reliance on deterrence as a punishment motive and the implementation of punishments aimed at deterrence (i.e., public punishments, public naming of rule breakers and punishments with a mandatory minimum). We discuss the practical implications for leaders, managers and policymakers and the theoretical implications for scholars interested in power, trust, and punishments.
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Markets and Morals: An Experimental Survey Study
Julio Elias, Nicola Lacetera & Mario Macis
PLoS ONE, June 2015
Abstract:
Most societies prohibit some market transactions based on moral concerns, even when the exchanges would benefit the parties involved and would not create negative externalities. A prominent example is given by payments for human organs for transplantation, banned virtually everywhere despite long waiting lists and many deaths of patients who cannot find a donor. Recent research, however, has shown that individuals significantly increase their stated support for a regulated market for human organs when provided with information about the organ shortage and the potential beneficial effects a price mechanism. In this study we focused on payments for human organs and on another "repugnant" transaction, indoor prostitution, to address two questions: (A) Does providing general information on the welfare properties of prices and markets modify attitudes toward repugnant trades? (B) Does additional knowledge on the benefits of a price mechanism in a specific context affect attitudes toward price-based transactions in another context? By answering these questions, we can assess whether eliciting a market-oriented approach may lead to a relaxation of moral opposition to markets, and whether there is a cross-effect of information, in particular for morally controversial activities that, although different, share a reference to the "commercialization" of the human body. Relying on an online survey experiment with 5,324 U.S. residents, we found no effect of general information about market efficiency, consistent with morally controversial markets being accepted only when they are seen as a solution to a specific problem. We also found some cross-effects of information about a transaction on the acceptance of the other; however, the responses were mediated by the gender and (to a lesser extent) religiosity of the respondent — in particular, women exposed to information about legalizing prostitution reduced their stated support for regulated organ payments. We relate these findings to prior research and discuss implications for public policy.
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On why hypocrisy thrives: Reasonable doubt created by moral posturing can deter punishment
Jan-Erik Lönnqvist, Rainer Michael Rilke & Gari Walkowitz
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2015, Pages 139–145
Abstract:
In four bargaining games with an option to punish, participants could avoid punishment by shifting the blame for an unfair offer on a random coin flip. Punishments were not affected by whether the results of the coin flip could be verified, nor by beliefs about whether a coin had actually been flipped (Studies 1–3). Our results suggest that the rather blatant moral posturing of hypocrites was enough to create reasonable doubt about their guilt, and that such doubt deterred punishment. Alternative explanations of reluctance to punish hypocrites, such as free-riding from altruistic punishment (Study 2), or feelings of gratitude (Study 3) were not supported. Independent third parties were also less punitive toward those who blamed the coin (Study 4). Similar results were found in an online vignette study run with a more representative sample (Study 5). In sum, these findings suggest that hypocrisy thrives because it can deter punishment.
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The Moral Virtue of Authenticity: How Inauthenticity Produces Feelings of Immorality and Impurity
Francesca Gino, Maryam Kouchaki & Adam Galinsky
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The five experiments reported here demonstrate that authenticity is directly linked to morality. We found that experiencing inauthenticity, compared with authenticity, consistently led participants to feel more immoral and impure. This link from inauthenticity to feeling immoral produced an increased desire among participants to cleanse themselves and to engage in moral compensation by behaving prosocially. We established the role that impurity played in these effects through mediation and moderation. We found that inauthenticity-induced cleansing and compensatory helping were driven by heightened feelings of impurity rather than by the psychological discomfort of dissonance. Similarly, physically cleansing oneself eliminated the relationship between inauthenticity and prosocial compensation. Finally, we obtained additional evidence for discriminant validity: The observed effects on desire for cleansing were not driven by general negative experiences (i.e., failing a test) but were unique to experiences of inauthenticity. Our results establish that authenticity is a moral state — that being true to thine own self is experienced as a form of virtue.
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Cheating at the End to Avoid Regret
Daniel Effron, Christopher Bryan & Keith Murnighan
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do people behave when they face a finite series of opportunities to cheat with little or no risk of detection? In 4 experiments and a small meta-analysis, we analyzed over 25,000 cheating opportunities faced by over 2,500 people. The results suggested that the odds of cheating are almost 3 times higher at the end of a series than earlier. Participants could cheat in 1 of 2 ways: They could lie about the outcome of a private coin flip to get a payoff that they would otherwise not receive (Studies 1–3) or they could overbill for their work (Study 4). We manipulated the number of cheating opportunities they expected but held the actual number of opportunities constant. The data showed that the likelihood of cheating and the extent of dishonesty were both greater when people believed that they were facing a last choice. Mediation analyses suggested that anticipatory regret about passing up a chance to enrich oneself drove this cheat-at-the-end effect. We found no support for alternative explanations based on the possibility that multiple cheating opportunities depleted people's self-control, eroded their moral standards, or made them feel that they had earned the right to cheat. The data also suggested that the cheat-at-the-end effect may be limited to relatively short series of cheating opportunities (i.e., n < 20). Our discussion addresses the psychological and behavioral dynamics of repeated ethical choices.
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Context-dependent cheating: Experimental evidence from 16 countries
David Pascual-Ezama et al.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, August 2015, Pages 379–386
Abstract:
Policy makers use several international indices that characterize countries according to the quality of their institutions. However, no effort has been made to study how the honesty of citizens varies across countries. This paper explores the honesty among citizens across sixteen countries with 1440 participants. We employ a very simple task where participants face a trade-off between the joy of eating a fine chocolate and the disutility of having a threatened self-concept because of lying. Despite the incentives to cheat, we find that individuals are mostly honest. Further, international indices that are indicative of institutional honesty are completely uncorrelated with citizens' honesty for our sample countries.
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Tobias Rothmund et al.
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Public discussions about the harmfulness of violent media are often held in the aftermath of violent felony. At the same time, we know little about whether and how experiencing real-life violence impacts the way laypersons perceive and evaluate debates about virtual violence. In Study 1, we provided data indicating that both real-life violence and violent video games are perceived as morally threatening by people who regard nonviolence to be an important moral value (i.e., pacifists). In Study 2, we hypothesized and found that when pacifists perceive threat from the presence of real-life violence, they are especially susceptible to scientific and political claims indicating that violent video games are harmful. Our findings are in line with the value protection model and research on the psychological consequences of threat. Implications of the present findings are discussed with regard to a better understanding of the violent video games debate in the general public.
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Perpetrator groups can enhance their moral self-image by accepting their own intergroup apologies
Fiona Kate Barlow et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, September 2015, Pages 39–50
Abstract:
There is an implicit assumption that perpetrators' moral image restoration following an intergroup apology depends on absolution from victims. In this paper we examine whether perpetrators can in fact look to other ingroup members for moral pardon. In Studies 1 and 4, Australians read an apology to Indian people for a series of assaults on Indian nationals in Australia. In Studies 2 and 3, Non-Aboriginal Australians were provided with apologies offered on their behalf to Aboriginal Australians. In each study participants were told that other perpetrator group members had either accepted or rejected the apology. In line with predictions, when perpetrator group members heard that fellow perpetrators accepted an apology made to victims they felt morally restored, and consequently were more willing to reconcile. Effects were largely unqualified by apology quality (Studies 2-4), and held in the face of victim group apology rejection (Studies 3-4). We demonstrate that perpetrator group members can effectively gain moral redemption by accepting their own apologies, even qualified ones that have proved insufficient to victim groups.
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Maria Kuehne et al.
PLoS ONE, May 2015
Abstract:
Attitude to morality, reflecting cultural norms and values, is considered unique to human social behavior. Resulting moral behavior in a social environment is controlled by a widespread neural network including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which plays an important role in decision making. In the present study we investigate the influence of neurophysiological modulation of DLPFC reactivity by means of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on moral reasoning. For that purpose we administered anodal, cathodal, and sham stimulation of the left DLPFC while subjects judged the appropriateness of hard moral personal dilemmas. In contrast to sham and cathodal stimulation, anodal stimulation induced a shift in judgment of personal moral dilemmas towards more non-utilitarian actions. Our results demonstrate that alterations of left DLPFC activity can change moral judgments and, in consequence, provide a causal link between left DLPFC activity and moral reasoning. Most important, the observed shift towards non-utilitarian actions suggests that moral decision making is not a permanent individual trait but can be manipulated; consequently individuals with boundless, uncontrollable, and maladaptive moral behavior, such as found in psychopathy, might benefit from neuromodulation-based approaches.
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Kimberly Goodyear et al.
Social Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Philosophers have proposed that laypeople can have deterministic or indeterministic intuitions about the relationship between free will and moral responsibility. However, the psychophysiological mechanisms that generate these extreme intuitions are still underexplored. Exogenous oxytocin offers a unique opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of these underlying mechanisms, since this neuropeptide influences a wide range of outcomes related to social cognition and prosociality. This study investigated the effects of intranasal oxytocin on intuitions about the relationship between free will and moral responsibility by applying a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-subject design. Healthy male participants rated the moral responsibility of a hypothetical offender, who committed crimes in either a primed deterministic or an indeterministic universe. Under placebo, participants held the offender more morally responsible when acting in an indeterministic compared to a deterministic universe, which could be accredited to recognition of the offender's freely chosen action to commit the crimes. Under oxytocin, participants rated the offender's actions with greater leniency and similarly assigned lower moral responsibility in both universes. These findings strengthen the assumption that a person can have different intuitions about the relationship between free will and moral responsibility, which can be presumably dependent on motivational states associated with affiliation.
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Rimma Teper et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, July 2015, Pages 887-900
Abstract:
Research in moral decision making has shown that there may not be a one-to-one relationship between peoples' moral forecasts and behaviors. Although past work suggests that physiological arousal may account for part of the behavior-forecasting discrepancy, whether or not perceptions of affect play an important determinant remains unclear. Here, we investigate whether this discrepancy may arise because people fail to anticipate how they will feel in morally significant situations. In Study 1, forecasters predicted cheating significantly more on a test than participants in a behavior condition actually cheated. Importantly, forecasters who received false somatic feedback, indicative of high arousal, produced forecasts that aligned more closely with behaviors. In Study 2, forecasters who misattributed their arousal to an extraneous source forecasted cheating significantly more. In Study 3, higher dispositional emotional awareness was related to less forecasted cheating. These findings suggest that perceptions of affect play a key role in the behavior-forecasting dissociation.
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Nina Mazar & Scott Hawkins
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2015, Pages 113–117
Abstract:
Default options significantly influence individuals' tendencies to comply with public policy goals such as organ donation. We extend that notion and explore the role defaults can play in encouraging (im)moral conduct in two studies. Building on previous research into omission and commission we show that individuals cheat most when it requires passively accepting a default, incorrect answer (Omission). More importantly, despite equivalent physical effort, individuals cheat less when it requires overriding a default, correct answer (Super-commission) than when simply giving an incorrect answer (Commission) — because the former is psychologically harder. Furthermore, while people expect physical and psychological costs to influence cheating, they do not believe that it takes a fundamentally different moral character to overcome either cost. Our findings support a more nuanced perspective on the implication of the different types of costs associated with default options and offer practical insights for policy, such as taxation, to nudge honesty.
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Jennifer Jordan, Francis Flynn & Taya Cohen
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We propose that guilt leads to forgiveness of others' transgressions. In Study 1, people prone to experience guilt (but not shame) were also prone to forgive others for past misdeeds. In Study 2, we manipulated harm- and inequity-based guilt; both increased forgiveness of others' transgressions. Further, the effect of guilt on forgiveness was mediated by identification with the transgressor. In Study 3, we replicated the guilt–forgiveness relationship and examined three other plausible mediators: capability for similar wrongdoing, empathic understanding, and general identification; only identification with the transgressor satisfied the criteria for mediation. In Study 4, we induced guilt by asking participants to harm a friend or stranger. Guilt induced by harming a friend led to greater forgiveness of third-party transgressors, and again, identification with the transgressor mediated the effect. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding how the prosocial effects of guilt extend beyond the boundaries of a single interpersonal relationship.
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The threat of moral transgression: The impact of group membership and moral opportunity
Jojanneke van der Toorn, Naomi Ellemers & Bertjan Doosje
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
When other ingroup members behave immorally, people's motivation to maintain a moral group image may cause them to experience increased threat and act defensively in response. In the current research, we investigated people's reactions to others' misconduct and examined the effect of group membership and the possible threat-reducing function of moral opportunity — the prospect of being able to re-establish the group's moral image. In Study 1, students who were confronted with fellow students' plagiarism and who received an opportunity to improve their group's morality reported feeling less threatened than students who did not receive such opportunity. In Study 2, students reacted to a recent academic fraud case, which either implicated an ingroup (scholar in their own discipline) or an outgroup member (scholar in another discipline). Results indicated that participants experienced more threat when an ingroup (versus an outgroup) member had committed the moral transgression. However, as hypothesized, this was not the case when moral opportunity was provided. Hence, the threat-reducing effect of moral opportunity was replicated. Additionally, participants generally were more defensive in response to ingroup (versus outgroup) moral failure and less defensive when moral opportunity was present (versus absent). Together, these findings suggest that the reduction of threat due to moral opportunity may generally help individuals take constructive action when the behavior of fellow group members discredits the group's moral image.
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Anticipating and Resisting the Temptation to Behave Unethically
Oliver Sheldon & Ayelet Fishbach
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, July 2015, Pages 962-975
Abstract:
Ethical dilemmas pose a self-control conflict between pursuing immediate benefits through behaving dishonestly and pursuing long-term benefits through acts of honesty. Therefore, factors that facilitate self-control for other types of goals (e.g., health and financial) should also promote ethical behavior. Across four studies, we find support for this possibility. Specifically, we find that only under conditions that facilitate conflict identification — including the consideration of several decisions simultaneously (i.e., a broad decision frame) and perceived high connectedness to the future self — does anticipating a temptation to behave dishonestly in advance promote honesty. We demonstrate these interaction patterns between conflict identification and temptation anticipation in negotiation situations (Study 1), lab tasks (Study 2), and ethical dilemmas in the workplace (Studies 3-4). We conclude that identifying a self-control conflict and anticipating a temptation are two necessary preconditions for ethical decision making.