Moral Minority
On being honest about dishonesty: The social costs of taking nuanced (but realistic) moral stances
Elizabeth Huppert et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite the well-documented costs of word–deed misalignment, hypocrisy permeates our personal, professional, and political lives. Why? We explore one potential explanation: the costs of moral flexibility can outweigh the costs of hypocrisy, making hypocritical moral absolutism a preferred social strategy to admissions of moral nuance. We study this phenomenon in the context of honesty. Across six studies (total N = 3545), we find that communicators who take flexible honesty stances (“It is sometimes okay to lie”) that align with their behavior are penalized more than hypocritical communicators who take absolute honesty stances (“It is never okay to lie”) that they fail to uphold. Although few people take absolute stances against deception themselves, they are more trusting of communicators who take absolute honesty stances, relative to flexible honesty stances, because they perceive absolute stances as reliable signals of communicators’ likelihood of engaging in future honesty, regardless of inconsistent behavior. Importantly, communicators -- including U.S. government officials -- also anticipate the costs of flexibility. This research deepens our understanding of the psychology of honesty and helps explain the persistence of hypocrisy in our social world.
People recognize and condone their own morally motivated reasoning
Corey Cusimano & Tania Lombrozo
Cognition, forthcoming
Abstract:
People often engage in biased reasoning, favoring some beliefs over others even when the result is a departure from impartial or evidence-based reasoning. Psychologists have long assumed that people are unaware of these biases and operate under an “illusion of objectivity.” We identify an important domain of life in which people harbor little illusion about their biases -- when they are biased for moral reasons. For instance, people endorse and feel justified believing morally desirable propositions even when they think they lack evidence for them (Study 1a/1b). Moreover, when people engage in morally desirable motivated reasoning, they recognize the influence of moral biases on their judgment, but nevertheless evaluate their reasoning as ideal (Studies 2–4). These findings overturn longstanding assumptions about motivated reasoning and identify a boundary condition on Naïve Realism and the Bias Blind Spot. People's tendency to be aware and proud of their biases provides both new opportunities, and new challenges, for resolving ideological conflict and improving reasoning.
"Good people don't need medication": How moral character beliefs affect medical decision making
Sydney Scott & Justin Landy
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, March 2023
Abstract:
We propose that moral character beliefs influence medical treatment choices. In comparison to behavioral treatments, medication is believed to be an “easy way out,” showing a lack of willpower and, therefore, a lack of moral character. These beliefs lower the appeal of medication treatments relative to behavioral treatments. Reducing the impact of moral beliefs moderates this effect. Specifically, the preference for behavior over medication attenuates when treatment choice is framed as “just a preference” and therefore irrelevant to moral character inferences. Finally, we find that when medication is the more effective option, it is no longer viewed as showing worse moral character. This is because two competing indirect effects occur: Medication is still viewed as showing worse willpower than (ineffective) behavior which shows worse moral character, but it is also viewed as creating better outcomes which shows better moral character. Our findings highlight the importance of moral identity in health decision-making.
Latent Diversity in Human Concepts
Louis Marti et al.
Open Mind, 2023, Pages 79–92
Abstract:
Many social and legal conflicts hinge on semantic disagreements. Understanding the origins and implications of these disagreements necessitates novel methods for identifying and quantifying variation in semantic cognition between individuals. We collected conceptual similarity ratings and feature judgements from a variety of words in two domains. We analyzed this data using a non-parametric clustering scheme, as well as an ecological statistical estimator, in order to infer the number of different variants of common concepts that exist in the population. Our results show at least ten to thirty quantifiably different variants of word meanings exist for even common nouns. Further, people are unaware of this variation, and exhibit a strong bias to erroneously believe that other people share their semantics. This highlights conceptual factors that likely interfere with productive political and social discourse.
Beliefs About Linear Social Progress
Julia Hur & Rachel Ruttan
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Society changes, but the degree to which it has changed can be difficult to evaluate. We propose that people possess beliefs that society has made, and will make, progress in a linear fashion toward social justice. Five sets of studies (13 studies in total) demonstrate that American participants consistently estimated that over time, society has made positive, linear progress toward social issues, such as gender equality, racial diversity, and environmental protection. These estimates were often not aligned with reality, where much progress has been made in a nonlinear fashion. We also ruled out some potential alternative explanations (Study 3) and explored the potential correlates of linear progress beliefs (Study 4). We further showed that these beliefs reduced the perceived urgency and effort needed to make further progress on social issues (Study 5), which may ultimately inhibit people’s willingness to act.
Worth the Risk? Greater Acceptance of Instrumental Harm Befalling Men than Women
Maja Graso, Tania Reynolds & Karl Aquino
Archives of Sexual Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scientific and organizational interventions often involve trade-offs whereby they benefit some but entail costs to others (i.e., instrumental harm; IH). We hypothesized that the gender of the persons incurring those costs would influence intervention endorsement, such that people would more readily support interventions inflicting IH onto men than onto women. We also hypothesized that women would exhibit greater asymmetries in their acceptance of IH to men versus women. Three experimental studies (two pre-registered) tested these hypotheses. Studies 1 and 2 granted support for these predictions using a variety of interventions and contexts. Study 3 tested a possible boundary condition of these asymmetries using contexts in which women have traditionally been expected to sacrifice more than men: caring for infants, children, the elderly, and the ill. Even in these traditionally female contexts, participants still more readily accepted IH to men than women. Findings indicate people (especially women) are less willing to accept instrumental harm befalling women (vs. men). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications and limitations of our findings.
Crossing the Line: Disgust, Dehumanization, and Human Rights Violations
David Rousseau, Brandon Gorman & Lisa Baranik
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, March 2023
Abstract:
What leads Americans to support human rights violations? The authors explore the role of disgust on dehumanization and support for retaliatory human rights violations, including support for torture, targeting noncombatants, and extrajudicial killing. Using a survey experiment, the authors find that American respondents are disgusted with outgroups whose behaviors violate global human rights norms. These feelings of disgust lead respondents to dehumanize these outgroups and support hypothetical human rights violations against past violators as well as noncombatants ostensibly affiliated with them. Although the experimental vignettes also triggered anger and sadness in participants, only disgust reactions consistently produced dehumanization and support for human rights violations against outgroups. The results indicate that global human rights norms delineate not only acceptable behavior toward others but also the boundaries between those deserving and undeserving of human rights protections.
Emotional Disclosure and Social Judgment
Kent Harber & Valeria Vila
Current Directions in Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Negative emotions can negatively bias social judgment. However, these emotions can be tempered when expressed, suggesting that emotional disclosure might enable fairer evaluations. Three projects confirmed this prediction. Subjects who disclosed about a past betrayal, compared to those who suppressed, felt closer to their betrayers -- the first step toward forgiveness. Disclosing the emotions evoked by viewing an assault, compared with suppressing those feelings, reduced victim blaming. Disclosure did not reduce blaming of victimizers, indicating that disclosure addresses specific emotions rather than calms general arousal. A recent study showed that disclosing a personal travail of any kind promotes acceptance of COVID-19 facts among political conservatives. Collectively, these results indicate that expressing troubling thoughts and feelings can enhance social judgment.
Spheres of immanent justice: Sacred violations evoke expectations of cosmic punishment, irrespective of societal punishment
Namrata Goyal, Krishna Savani & Michael Morris
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
People like to believe that misdeeds do not escape punishment. However, do people expect that some kinds of sins are particularly punished by “the universe,” not just by society? Five experiments (N = 1184) found that people expected more cosmic punishment for transgressions of sacred rules than transgressions of secular rules or conventions (Studies 1–3) and that this “sacred effect” holds even after violations have been punished by society (Study 4a-4b). In Study 1, participants expected more cosmic punishment for a person who had sex with a cousin (sacred taboo) than sex with a subordinate (secular harm) or sex with a family associate (convention violation). In Study 2, people expected more cosmic punishment for eating a bald eagle (sacred violation) than eating an endangered puffin (secular violation) or a farm-raised emu (convention violation). In Study 3, Hindus expected more cosmic punishment for entering a temple wearing shoes (sacred violation) rather than entering a temple wearing revealing clothing (secular violation) or sunglasses (convention violation). In all three studies, this “sacred effect” was mediated by the perceived blasphemy rather than the perceived harm, immorality, or unusualness of the violations. Study 4a measured both expectations of societal and cosmic punishment, and Study 4b measured expectations of cosmic punishment after each violation had received societal punishment. Even after violations received societal punishment, people expected more cosmic punishment for sacred violations than secular or convention violations. Results are discussed in relation to models of immanent justice and just world beliefs.