The dark side
Prospective Moral Licensing: Does Anticipating Doing Good Later Allow You to Be Bad Now?
Jessica Cascio & Ashby Plant
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, January 2015, Pages 110–116
Abstract:
Moral licensing, whereby behaving morally allows a person to subsequently behave immorally, has been demonstrated in numerous experiments. The current research examined the effects of prospective moral licensing: how planning to perform a future moral behavior affects the morality of current behavior. Across four studies we explored whether anticipating engaging in a moral behavior in the future (e.g., taking part in a fundraiser or donating blood) leads people to make a racially biased decision (Studies 1 and 2) or espouse racially biased attitudes (Studies 3 and 4) in the present. Participants who anticipated performing a moral action in the future displayed more racial bias than control participants. Additionally, prospective moral licensing occurred for both ambiguously and overtly prejudiced acts suggesting that prospective licensing is due to moral credits accumulating rather than moral credentials being established. These results demonstrate that anticipating a future moral act licenses people to behave immorally now and indicate that perceptions of morality encompass a wide variety of concepts, including past as well as anticipated future behavior.
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Core Values Versus Common Sense: Consequentialist Views Appear Less Rooted in Morality
Tamar Kreps & Benoît Monin
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, November 2014, Pages 1529-1542
Abstract:
When a speaker presents an opinion, an important factor in audiences’ reactions is whether the speaker seems to be basing his or her decision on ethical (as opposed to more pragmatic) concerns. We argue that, despite a consequentialist philosophical tradition that views utilitarian consequences as the basis for moral reasoning, lay perceivers think that speakers using arguments based on consequences do not construe the issue as a moral one. Five experiments show that, for both political views (including real State of the Union quotations) and organizational policies, consequentialist views are seen to express less moralization than deontological views, and even sometimes than views presented with no explicit justification. We also demonstrate that perceived moralization in turn affects speakers’ perceived commitment to the issue and authenticity. These findings shed light on lay conceptions of morality and have practical implications for people considering how to express moral opinions publicly.
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Happiness, political orientation, and religiosity
Michael Bixter
Personality and Individual Differences, January 2015, Pages 7–11
Abstract:
Previous research has focused on how happiness is independently associated with political orientation and religiosity. The current study instead explored how political orientation and religiosity interact in establishing levels of happiness. Data from both the 2012 General Social Survey and the 2005 World Values Survey were used. Results from both data sets support prior research by showing a positive association between happiness and both political conservatism and religiosity. Importantly, it was found that political conservatism and religiosity interact in predicting happiness levels. Specifically, the current results suggest that religiosity has a greater effect on happiness for more politically conservative individuals compared to more politically liberal individuals.
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Leader corruption depends on power and testosterone
Samuel Bendahan et al.
Leadership Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
We used incentivized experimental games to manipulate leader power — the number of followers and the discretion leaders had to enforce their will. Leaders had complete autonomy in deciding payouts to themselves and their followers. Although leaders could make prosocial decisions to benefit the public good they could also abuse their power by invoking antisocial decisions, which reduced the total payouts to the group but increased the leaders' earnings. In Study 1 (N = 478), we found that both amount of followers and discretionary choices independently predicted leader corruption. In Study 2 (N = 240), we examined how power and individual differences (e.g., personality, hormones) affected leader corruption over time; power interacted with endogenous testosterone in predicting corruption, which was highest when leader power and baseline testosterone were both high. Honesty predicted initial level of leader antisocial decisions; however, honesty did not shield leaders from the corruptive effect of power.
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Too tired to taint the truth: Ego-depletion reduces other-benefiting dishonesty
Katarzyna Cantarero & Wijnand van Tilburg
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Numerous studies indicate that ego-depletion increases the occurrence of self-benefiting dishonest behavior by undermining resistance to short-term temptations associated with dishonesty. Turning this phenomenon around, we examined whether ego-depletion can, counterintuitively, reduce dishonest behavior in a context where dishonesty serves to benefit others. Specifically, based on the notion that ego-depletion reduces commitment to long-term/abstract goals and interferes with self-control, we proposed and found in an experiment that ego-depleted people are less likely to display dishonest behavior that spares another person from an unpleasant truth. These findings have implications for the study of dishonesty and moral dilemmas in interpersonal settings.
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The Value of Vengeance and the Demand for Deterrence
Molly Crockett, Yagiz Özdemir & Ernst Fehr
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Humans will incur costs to punish others who violate social norms. Theories of justice highlight 2 motives for punishment: a forward-looking deterrence of future norm violations and a backward-looking retributive desire to harm. Previous studies of costly punishment have not isolated how much people are willing to pay for retribution alone, because typically punishment both inflicts damage (satisfying the retributive motive) and communicates a norm violation (satisfying the deterrence motive). Here, we isolated retributive motives by examining how much people will invest in punishment when the punished individual will never learn about the punishment. Such “hidden” punishment cannot deter future norm violations but was nevertheless frequently used by both 2nd-party victims and 3rd-party observers of norm violations, indicating that retributive motives drive punishment decisions independently from deterrence goals. While self-reports of deterrence motives correlated with deterrence-related punishment behavior, self-reports of retributive motives did not correlate with retributive punishment behavior. Our findings reveal a preference for pure retribution that can lead to punishment without any social benefits.
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Judging the Goring Ox: Retribution Directed Toward Animals
Geoffrey Goodwin & Adam Benforado
Cognitive Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prior research on the psychology of retribution is complicated by the difficulty of separating retributive and general deterrence motives when studying human offenders (Study 1). We isolate retribution by investigating judgments about punishing animals, which allows us to remove general deterrence from consideration. Studies 2 and 3 document a “victim identity” effect, such that the greater the perceived loss from a violent animal attack, the greater the belief that the culprit deserves to be killed. Study 3 documents a “targeted punishment” effect, such that the responsive killing of the actual “guilty” culprit is seen as more deserved than the killing of an almost identical yet “innocent” animal from the same species. Studies 4 and 5 extend both effects to participants' acceptance of inflicting pain and suffering on the offending animal at the time of its death, and show that both effects are mediated by measures of retributive sentiment, and not by consequentialist concerns.
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Changing theories of change: Strategic shifting in implicit theory endorsement
Scott Leith et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, October 2014, Pages 597-620
Abstract:
People differ in their implicit theories about the malleability of characteristics such as intelligence and personality. These relatively chronic theories can be experimentally altered, and can be affected by parent or teacher feedback. Little is known about whether people might selectively shift their implicit beliefs in response to salient situational goals. We predicted that, when motivated to reach a desired conclusion, people might subtly shift their implicit theories of change and stability to garner supporting evidence for their desired position. Any motivated context in which a particular lay theory would help people to reach a preferred directional conclusion could elicit shifts in theory endorsement. We examine a variety of motivated situational contexts across 7 studies, finding that people’s theories of change shifted in line with goals to protect self and liked others and to cast aspersions on disliked others. Studies 1–3 demonstrate how people regulate their implicit theories to manage self-view by more strongly endorsing an incremental theory after threatening performance feedback or memories of failure. Studies 4–6 revealed that people regulate the implicit theories they hold about favored and reviled political candidates, endorsing an incremental theory to forgive preferred candidates for past gaffes but leaning toward an entity theory to ensure past failings “stick” to opponents. Finally, in Study 7, people who were most threatened by a previously convicted child sex offender (i.e., parents reading about the offender moving to their neighborhood) gravitated most to the entity view that others do not change. Although chronic implicit theories are undoubtedly meaningful, this research reveals a previously unexplored source of fluidity by highlighting the active role people play in managing their implicit theories in response to goals.
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Who Accepts Responsibility for Their Transgressions?
Karina Schumann & Carol Dweck
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
After committing an offense, transgressors can optimize their chances of reconciling with the victim by accepting responsibility. However, transgressors may be motivated to avoid admitting fault because it can feel threatening to accept blame for harmful behavior. Who, then, is likely to accept responsibility for a transgression? We examined how implicit theories of personality — whether people see personality as malleable (incremental theory) or fixed (entity theory) — influence transgressors’ likelihood of accepting responsibility. We argue that incremental theorists may feel less threatened by accepting responsibility because they are more likely to view the situation as an opportunity for them to grow as a person and develop their relationship with the victim. We found support for our predictions across four studies using a combination of real-world and hypothetical offenses, and correlational and experimental methods. These studies therefore identify an important individual difference factor that can lead to more effective responses from transgressors.
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Maryam Kouchaki & Sreedhari Desai
Journal of Applied Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
People often experience anxiety in the workplace. Across 6 studies, we show that anxiety, both induced and measured, can lead to self-interested unethical behavior. In Studies 1 and 2, we find that compared with individuals in a neutral state, anxious individuals are more willing (a) to participate in unethical actions in hypothetical scenarios and (b) to engage in more cheating to make money in situations that require truthful self-reports. In Studies 3 and 4, we explore the psychological mechanism underlying unethical behaviors when experiencing anxiety. We suggest and find that anxiety increases threat perception, which, in turn, results in self-interested unethical behaviors. Study 5 shows that, relative to participants in the neutral condition, anxious individuals find their own unethical actions to be less problematic than similar actions of others. In Study 6, data from subordinate–supervisor dyads demonstrate that experienced anxiety at work is positively related with experienced threat and unethical behavior. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.
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Dangerous Expectations: Breaking Rules to Resolve Cognitive Dissonance
Celia Moore, Wiley Wakeman & Francesca Gino
Harvard Working Paper, August 2014
Abstract:
When entering task performance contexts we generally have expectations about both the task and how well we will perform on it. When those expectations go unmet, we experience psychological discomfort (cognitive dissonance), which we are then motivated to resolve. Prior research on expectancy disconfirmation in task performance contexts has focused on the dysfunctional consequences of disconfirming low performance expectations (i.e., stereotype threat). In this paper we focus on the dysfunctional consequences of disconfirming high performance expectations. In three studies, we find that individuals are more likely to break rules if they have been led to expect that achieving high levels of performance will be easy rather than difficult, even if breaking rules means behaving unethically. We show that this willingness to break rules is not due to differences in legitimate performance as a function of how easy people expect the task to be, or whether their expectations are set explicitly (by referring to others’ performance) or implicitly (as implied by their own prior performance). Instead, using a misattribution paradigm, we show that cognitive dissonance triggered by unmet expectations drives our effects.
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Regulatory adaptations for delivering information: The case of confession
Daniel Sznycer et al.
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prior to, or concurrent with, the encoding of concepts into speech, the individual faces decisions about whether, what, when, how, and with whom to communicate. Compared to the existing wealth of linguistic knowledge however, we know little of the mechanisms that govern the delivery and accrual of information. Here we focus on a fundamental issue of communication: The decision whether to deliver information. Specifically, we study spontaneous confession to a victim. Given the costs of social devaluation, offenders are hypothesized to refrain from confessing unless the expected benefits of confession (e.g. enabling the victim to remedially modify their course of action) outweigh its marginal costs — the victim’s reaction, discounted by the likelihood that information about the offense has not leaked. The logic of welfare tradeoffs indicates that the victim’s reaction will be less severe and, therefore, less costly to the offender, with decreases in the cost of the offense to the victim and, counter-intuitively, with increases in the benefit of the offense to the offender. Data from naturalistic offenses and experimental studies supported these predictions. Offenders are more willing to confess when the benefit of the offense to them is high, the cost to the victim is low, and the probability of information leakage is high. This suggests a conflict of interests between senders and receivers: Often, offenders are more willing to confess when confessions are less beneficial to the victims. An evolutionary-computational framework is a fruitful approach to understanding the factors that regulate communication.
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Simon Schindler & Marc-André Reinhard
Personality and Individual Differences, January 2015, Pages 105–109
Abstract:
Belief in a just world has been linked to high interpersonal trust and less suspicion of deception. We therefore predicted people with a strong dispositional belief in a just world to have low motivation to accurately detect deception. Accordingly, we hypothesized such a belief to be negatively related to accuracy in deception detection. Furthermore, research on Terror Management Theory has indicated that culturally shared values, such as justice, become more important after mortality salience. Thus, we assumed engaging in justice concerns after a death threat is especially relevant for people with a strong belief in a just world, and further, that accurate deception detection is a matter of justice. Based on this reasoning, we expected people with a strong belief in a just world to have an increased motivation to accurately detect deception after mortality salience. Consequently, we hypothesized dispositional differences in belief in a just world to be unrelated to accuracy in deception detection after mortality salience. In line with these predictions, our study revealed that participants with a strong (vs. weak) belief in a just world were worse in deception detection unless they had first been reminded of their mortality.
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Hong Zhang & Darius Chan
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three experiments examined the effects of interpersonal security, defined as a sense of being loved, protected, or cared for through social interactions, on individuals’ inclination to dehumanize other people and their preference for harsh actions that might bring pain and suffering to others. In Experiment 1, participants who were primed with interpersonal security, compared to those in the control condition, were less prone to dehumanize a woman who had withdrawn illegal money from a malfunctioning ATM, which in turn predicted their preference for a less severe punishment for her. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants who were instructed to recall a social situation in which they felt loved and protected were less likely to support a harsh policy of forced migration of certain individuals than those who were primed with a neutral scene, through a reduction in participants’ levels of dehumanization. Moreover, in Experiment 3, we directly compared our manipulation of interpersonal security with Waytz and Epley’s (2012) procedure to manipulate social connection and found that only when the nurturance-related aspects of social connection were highlighted were participants less prone to dehumanize others.
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The Dramaturgical Perspective in Relation to Self and Culture
Daniel Sullivan et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social scientists have studied human behavior from the dramaturgical perspective (DP), through which society is viewed as an elaborate play or game in which individuals enact different roles. The DP is more than a theoretical construct; members of individualist, secular societies occasionally adopt the DP with relation to their own lives. The current research examined the consequences of adopting the DP for evaluations of the self and conceptions of reality at large. Study 1 examined the attitudinal correlates of DP endorsement to test our claim that the DP is situated in an ideological context of individualism and secular modernism. Supporting our claim that the DP invalidates external information about the self’s value, in Studies 2A and 2B individuals endorsed the DP to a greater extent after a self-esteem threat, and Studies 2C and 3 showed that exposure to the DP (but not a direct system threat) buffered self-esteem threats. Examining moderators of the DP’s influence on self-esteem, Study 4 showed that taking the DP with regard to the ultimate value (vs. concrete experience) of a social role decreased self-esteem and investment in that role. Studies 5A and 5B examined the DP’s consequences for perceived moral objectivism. Adopting the DP decreased moral objectivism and moralization of various behaviors but not when the intrinsic self was dispositionally or situationally salient. The latter finding suggests that although contemporary individuals can and occasionally do adopt a reflective stance toward their place within social reality, they nevertheless continue to believe in a true, core self that transcends that precarious drama.
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Christina Roylance et al.
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, September/October 2014, Pages 452-460
Abstract:
Research has demonstrated that undermining cultural worldviews increases death-thought accessibility (DTA). However, individual differences in commitment to a particular worldview may predict DTA when that belief is challenged. In the present research, we tested if individual differences in belief in a just world (BJW) relate to DTA when the BJW is undermined. In Studies 1 and 3, BJW was associated with DTA when people reflected on an unfair experience. Study 3 indicated that this effect is driven by general BJW. In Study 2, BJW was associated with DTA after the 2012 presidential election among individuals who supported the losing candidate.
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Jeffrey Robinson, Samantha Joel & Jason Plaks
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, January 2015, Pages 139–152
Abstract:
Research on deontological versus utilitarian moral reasoning has been largely silent on how interpersonal experiences shape moral judgment. We hypothesized that both anxious and avoidant attachment would predict the propensity to make utilitarian versus deontological judgments, but via different pathways. In Studies 1 and 2, the link between anxious attachment and utilitarianism was mediated by the need to belong and empathy toward the group. In contrast, the link between avoidant attachment and utilitarianism was mediated by discomfort with caring for others and decreased empathy toward the individual victim. In Study 3, the moral judgments of anxiously attached individuals changed to more closely match the group’s desired outcome: utilitarian or deontological. In contrast, the judgments of avoidantly attached individuals moved in opposition to the desire of the group. The distinct paths to utilitarianism displayed by anxious and avoidant individuals suggest that utilitarianism may result from a diverse set of psychological processes.
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Shannon Houck, Lucian Gideon Conway & Meredith Repke
Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Psychological research on the efficacy of torture frequently excludes an important question: What causes people to believe that torture is effective? We investigated whether a factor increasing persons’ desire for torture to be effective might lead them to perceive that it was more effective. Across 2 studies, participants evaluated hypothetical crisis scenarios that varied in the degree of personal closeness to the potential victim of the perpetrator in the crisis. They then indicated the degree to which they believed that torture would be effective in the scenario. Findings revealed that personal closeness to the victim led to the belief that using torture would be more effective. Results further suggested that perceived efficacy in part accounted for the effect of personal closeness on torture support in the scenario. These studies help inform our understanding of the psychology of people’s perceptions about torture in applied circumstances.
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Strategic Ignorance and the Robustness of Social Preferences
Zachary Grossman
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Participants in dictator games frequently avoid learning whether their choice to maximize their own earnings will help or hurt the recipient and then choose selfishly, exploiting the “moral wiggle room” provided by their ignorance. However, this is found in an environment in which the dictator must actively learn the true payoffs, so inaction means ignorance. Does this effect persist when one must actively choose either to be ignorant or to be informed or when one must actively choose to remain ignorant? In fact, whereas 45% of dictators remain ignorant when one must click to become informed, this drops to 25% when one must click in either case and to 3% when one must click to remain ignorant. Although the exploitation of moral wiggle room is not merely an artifact, it is, much like social behavior itself, subject to environmental and psychological factors that may reinforce or undermine its impact.
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Samer Halabi, Yael Statman & John Dovidio
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
People have a need to believe that the world is a just place. When confronted with injustice, this just world belief (JWB) is threatened. The present research, conducted in the context of relations between Israeli Jews and Arabs, examined how group membership of actor and participants’ beliefs in a just world affect attributions of responsibility and punishment as a function of culpability of the actor. In particular, after measuring their JWB, Jewish participants (n = 214) read a description of a Jewish or Arab driver who was guilty or nonguilty in a car accident in which an innocent pedestrian was injured. As predicted, participants attributed less blame and recommended less severe punishment for an ingroup than an outgroup member for the same event and stronger beliefs in a just world predicted recommendations for less severe punishment for ingroup members. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.
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Displaced Revenge: Can revenge taste “sweet” if it aims at a different target?
Arne Sjöström & Mario Gollwitzer
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article investigates whether acts of displaced revenge, that is, revenge targeted at a different person than the original transgressor, can be satisfying for the avenger. We assume that displaced revenge can lead to justice-related satisfaction when the group to which the original transgressor and the displaced target belong is highly entitative. Two experimental online studies show that displaced revenge leads to less regret (Study 1; N = 169) or more satisfaction (Study 2; N = 89) when the transgressor and the displaced target belong to a group that is perceived as highly entitative. Study 3 (N = 72) shows that avengers experience more satisfaction when members of the transgressor group were manipulated to be both strongly interconnected and similar in their appearance. Results of an internal meta-analysis furthermore corroborate the notion that displaced revenge leads to more satisfaction when the transgressor group is highly entitative. Taken together, our findings suggest that even displaced revenge can achieve a sense of justice in the eyes of avengers.