Unacceptable
Apologies demanded yet devalued: Normative dilution in the age of apology
Tyler Okimoto, Michael Wenzel & Matthew Hornsey
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, September 2015, Pages 133-136
Abstract:
Dramatic increases in the issuance of political apologies over the last two decades mean that we now live in the "age of apology". But what does this surge in frequency mean for the effectiveness of intergroup apologies in promoting forgiveness? In the current research we propose a paradoxical "normative dilution" effect whereby behavioral norms increase the perceived appropriateness of an action while at the same time reducing its symbolic value. We experimentally manipulated the salience of the age-of-apology norm prior to assessing participant (N = 128) reactions to past unjust treatment of ingroup POWs by the Japanese during WWII. The apologetic norm increased victim group members' desire for an apology in response to the harm. However, after reading the actual apology, the invocation of the norm decreased perceived apology sincerity and subsequent willingness to forgive. Thus, although apologetic trends may suggest greater contemporary interest in seeking reconciliation and harmony, their inflationary use risks devaluing apologies and undermining their effectiveness.
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Moral Vitalism: Seeing Good and Evil as Real, Agentic Forces
Brock Bastian et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, August 2015, Pages 1069-1081
Abstract:
Moral vitalism refers to a tendency to view good and evil as actual forces that can influence people and events. We introduce a scale designed to assess the belief in moral vitalism. High scorers on the scale endorse items such as "There are underlying forces of good and evil in this world." After establishing the reliability and criterion validity of the scale (Studies 1, 2a, and 2b), we examined the predictive validity of the moral vitalism scale, showing that "moral vitalists" worry about being possessed by evil (Study 3), being contaminated through contact with evil people (Study 4), and forfeiting their own mental purity (Study 5). We discuss the nature of moral vitalism and the implications of the construct for understanding the role of metaphysical lay theories about the nature of good and evil in moral reasoning.
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Group differences in broadness of values may drive dynamics of public opinion on moral issues
Kimmo Eriksson & Pontus Strimling
Mathematical Social Sciences, September 2015, Pages 1-8
Abstract:
Here we propose the idea that the success of an argument in favor of an issue position should depend on whether the argument resonates with the audience's values. Now consider two groups, one of which has a broader set of values than the other. We develop a mathematical model to investigate how this difference in broadness of values may drive a change on the population level towards positions in line with the more narrow set of values. The model is motivated by the empirical finding that conservative morality rests equally on moral foundations that are individualizing (harm and fairness) and binding (purity, authority, and ingroup), whereas liberal morality relies mainly on the individualizing moral foundations. The model then predicts that, under certain conditions, the whole population will tend to move towards positions on moral issues (e.g., same-sex marriage) that are supported by individualizing moral foundations.
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Seeing You Fall vs Taking You Down: The Roles of Agency and Liking in Schadenfreude
Keegan Greenier
Psychological Reports, June 2015, Pages 941-953
Abstract:
People are more likely to experience schadenfreude, i.e., take pleasure in the misfortunes of another, if they do not like the person experiencing the downfall. In the current study, the roles of liking and agency (being the cause of the downfall vs a passive observer) were investigated using a live (rather than hypothetical) situation for participants to react to. Participants were exposed to a rude, neutral, or nice confederate who won a coveted prize. Participants were then put into a position to either cause the confederate to lose her prize, or to only passively observe it happen. Feelings of schadenfreude were strongest when participants were the agent of a rude other's downfall. Implications for incorporating aspects of this study into future research were discussed.
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Chimpanzees' Bystander Reactions to Infanticide
Claudia Rudolf von Rohr et al.
Human Nature, June 2015, Pages 143-160
Abstract:
Social norms - generalized expectations about how others should behave in a given context - implicitly guide human social life. However, their existence becomes explicit when they are violated because norm violations provoke negative reactions, even from personally uninvolved bystanders. To explore the evolutionary origin of human social norms, we presented chimpanzees with videos depicting a putative norm violation: unfamiliar conspecifics engaging in infanticidal attacks on an infant chimpanzee. The chimpanzees looked far longer at infanticide scenes than at control videos showing nut cracking, hunting a colobus monkey, or displays and aggression among adult males. Furthermore, several alternative explanations for this looking pattern could be ruled out. However, infanticide scenes did not generally elicit higher arousal. We propose that chimpanzees as uninvolved bystanders may detect norm violations but may restrict emotional reactions to such situations to in-group contexts. We discuss the implications for the evolution of human morality.
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Not All Fairness Is Created Equal: Fairness Perceptions of Group vs. Individual Decision Makers
Maryam Kouchaki, Isaac Smith & Ekaterina Netchaeva
Organization Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Drawing on fairness heuristic theory and literature on negative group schemas, we develop and empirically test the idea that, given the exact same decision outcome, people perceive groups to be less fair than individuals when they receive a decision outcome that is unfavorable, but not when they receive one that is favorable or neutral (Studies 1 and 2). To account for this difference in fairness perceptions following an unfavorable outcome, we show that the mere presence of a group as a decision-making body serves as a cue that increases the accessibility of negative group-related associations in a perceiver's mind (Study 3). Moreover, in a sample of recently laid-off workers - representing a broad range of organizations and demographic characteristics - we demonstrate that those who received a layoff decision made by a group of decision makers (versus an individual) are marginally more likely to perceive the decision as unfair and are marginally less likely to endorse the organization (Study 4). Taken together, the results of all four studies suggest that, in response to the same unfavorable decision outcome, a group of decision makers is often perceived to be less fair than an individual.
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Fairness requires deliberation: The primacy of economic over social considerations
Guy Hochman, Shahar Ayal & Dan Ariely
Frontiers in Psychology, June 2015
Abstract:
While both economic and social considerations of fairness and equity play an important role in financial decision-making, it is not clear which of these two motives is more primal and immediate and which one is secondary and slow. Here we used variants of the ultimatum game to examine this question. Experiment 1 shows that acceptance rate of unfair offers increases when participants are asked to base their choice on their gut-feelings, as compared to when they thoroughly consider the available information. In line with these results, Experiments 2 and 3 provide process evidence that individuals prefer to first examine economic information about their own utility rather than social information about equity and fairness, even at the price of foregoing such social information. Our results suggest that people are more economically rational at the core, but social considerations (e.g., inequality aversion) require deliberation, which under certain conditions override their self-interested impulses.
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Felix Suessenbach & Adam Moore
Personality and Individual Differences, November 2015, Pages 297-302
Abstract:
We all face moral decisions, whether we are judges, politicians, or just riding the bus. The most well studied of these involve concerns of harming or caring for other people, which have often been researched by employing hypothetical moral dilemmas. This study investigated how the explicit power motive, more precisely the hope to gain power (h_Power), predicts decisions for these types of problems. We found that h_Power was positively related to deciding that it was morally acceptable to kill one person to save multiple others (i.e., making a utilitarian choice). In an exploratory analysis, we found that the probability of making such choices as a function of h_Power was even higher when participants' own lives were at stake as compared to only the lives of others. These findings complement previous research showing that personality variables as well as situational factors predict moral decision making. Finding biases in moral decision making is important, as only when we know these biases we can consciously counteract them.
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Dissociable Effects of Serotonin and Dopamine on the Valuation of Harm in Moral Decision Making
Molly Crockett et al.
Current Biology, 20 July 2015, Pages 1852-1859
Abstract:
An aversion to harming others is a core component of human morality and is disturbed in antisocial behavior. Deficient harm aversion may underlie instrumental and reactive aggression, which both feature in psychopathy. Past work has highlighted monoaminergic influences on aggression, but a mechanistic account of how monoamines regulate antisocial motives remains elusive. We previously observed that most people show a greater aversion to inflicting pain on others than themselves. Here, we investigated whether this hyperaltruistic disposition is susceptible to monoaminergic control. We observed dissociable effects of the serotonin reuptake inhibitor citalopram and the dopamine precursor levodopa on decisions to inflict pain on oneself and others for financial gain. Computational models of choice behavior showed that citalopram increased harm aversion for both self and others, while levodopa reduced hyperaltruism. The effects of citalopram were stronger than those of levodopa. Crucially, neither drug influenced the physical perception of pain or other components of choice such as motor impulsivity or loss aversion, suggesting a direct and specific influence of serotonin and dopamine on the valuation of harm. We also found evidence for dose dependency of these effects. Finally, the drugs had dissociable effects on response times, with citalopram enhancing behavioral inhibition and levodopa reducing slowing related to being responsible for another's fate. These distinct roles of serotonin and dopamine in modulating moral behavior have implications for potential treatments of social dysfunction that is a common feature as well as a risk factor for many psychiatric disorders.
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Keren Sharvit et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Four studies tested the proposition that regulation of collective guilt in the face of harmful ingroup behavior involves motivated reasoning. Cognitive energetics theory suggests that motivated reasoning is a function of goal importance, mental resource availability, and task demands. Accordingly, three studies conducted in the United States and Israel demonstrated that high importance of avoiding collective guilt, represented by group identification (Studies 1 and 3) and conservative ideological orientation (Study 2), is negatively related to collective guilt, but only when mental resources are not depleted by cognitive load. The fourth study, conducted in Italy, demonstrated that when justifications for the ingroup's harmful behavior are immediately available, the task of regulating collective guilt and shame becomes less demanding and less susceptible to resource depletion. By combining knowledge from the domains of motivated cognition, emotion regulation, and intergroup relations, these cross-cultural studies offer novel insights regarding factors underlying the regulation of collective guilt.
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Experimental philosophy of actual and counterfactual free will intuitions
Adam Feltz
Consciousness and Cognition, November 2015, Pages 113-130
Abstract:
Five experiments suggested that everyday free will and moral responsibility judgments about some hypothetical thought examples differed from free will and moral responsibility judgments about the actual world. Experiment 1 (N = 106) showed that free will intuitions about the actual world measured by the FAD-Plus poorly predicted free will intuitions about a hypothetical person performing a determined action (r = .13). Experiments 2-5 replicated this result and found the relations between actual free will judgments and free will judgments about hypothetical determined or fated actions (rs = .22-.35) were much smaller than the differences between them (ηp2 = .2-.55). These results put some pressure on theoretical accounts of everyday intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility.
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Sreedhari Desai & Maryam Kouchaki
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, September 2015, Pages 79-88
Abstract:
The current paper examines how asking for a report of units of work completed versus cost of the same work can influence overbilling. We suggest that something as simple as asking for a report of units of work completed (for instance, reporting either the time spent or number of units of work completed) as opposed to the cost of the work completed can drive different unethical behaviors. We argue that unit-reporting makes providers feel accountable for their actions, and this induced accountability, in turn, impacts actual billing behaviors. We present seven studies, including a field experiment in the auto-repair industry that demonstrate the effect of different work-report formats on overbilling and provide evidence for our proposed underlying mechanism.
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The Unifying Moral Dyad: Liberals and Conservatives Share the Same Harm-Based Moral Template
Chelsea Schein & Kurt Gray
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, August 2015, Pages 1147-1163
Abstract:
Do moral disagreements regarding specific issues (e.g., patriotism, chastity) reflect deep cognitive differences (i.e., distinct cognitive mechanisms) between liberals and conservatives? Dyadic morality suggests that the answer is "no." Despite moral diversity, we reveal that moral cognition - in both liberals and conservatives - is rooted in a harm-based template. A dyadic template suggests that harm should be central within moral cognition, an idea tested - and confirmed - through six specific hypotheses. Studies suggest that moral judgment occurs via dyadic comparison, in which counter-normative acts are compared with a prototype of harm. Dyadic comparison explains why harm is the most accessible and important of moral content, why harm organizes - and overlaps with - diverse moral content, and why harm best translates across moral content. Dyadic morality suggests that various moral content (e.g., loyalty, purity) are varieties of perceived harm and that past research has substantially exaggerated moral differences between liberals and conservatives.
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Hypocrisy by association: When organizational membership increases condemnation for wrongdoing
Daniel Effron, Brian Lucas & Kieran O'Connor
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
Abstract:
Hypocrisy occurs when people fail to practice what they preach. Four experiments document the hypocrisy-by-association effect, whereby failing to practice what an organization preaches can make an employee seem hypocritical and invite moral condemnation. Participants judged employees more harshly for the same transgression when it was inconsistent with ethical values the employees' organization promoted, and ascriptions of hypocrisy mediated this effect (Studies 1-3). The results did not support the possibility that inconsistent transgressions simply seemed more harmful. In Study 4, participants were less likely to select a job candidate whose transgression did (vs. did not) contradict a value promoted by an organization where he had once interned. The results suggest that employees are seen as morally obligated to uphold the values that their organization promotes, even by people outside of the organization. We discuss how observers will judge someone against different ethical standards depending on where she or he works.
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Agne Kajackaite
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, August 2015, Pages 518-524
Abstract:
This paper tests whether choosing to stay ignorant about the negative consequences of one's own actions affects performance in a real-effort experiment. In the experiment, participants' effort increased only their own payoff or also the donation to a negatively perceived charity. We introduced ignorance by letting agents decide whether to learn if the effort benefits the charity. As expected, agents exerted significantly higher efforts if they knew the negatively perceived charity would receive no benefits. Yet, when given the choice, almost a third of the agents chose to stay ignorant and exert significantly more effort than agents who knew their effort would benefit the charity. Importantly, if the uncertainty about the donation to the charity was introduced exogenously, agents exerted lower effort than ignorant agents, which suggests that not having information about the consequences of one's own actions alone does not lead to self-interested behavior, but rather, the sorting of social agents of a low type into ignorance drives self-interested behavior of ignorant agents.