scholarly journals People Systematically Update Moral Judgments of Blame

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Elliott Monroe ◽  
Bertram F. Malle
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Social Constraints ◽  
Normal Process ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
Human History ◽  
Systematic Processing ◽  
The Social

Six experiments examine people's updating of blame judgments and test predictions developed from a socially-regulated blame perspective. According to this perspective, blame emerged in human history as a socially costly tool for regulating other’s behavior. Because it is costly for both blamers and violators, blame is typically constrained by requirements for “warrant”— evidence that one’s moral judgment is justified. This requirement motivates people to systematically process available causal and mental information surrounding a violation. That is, people are relatively calibrated and even-handed in utilizing evidence that either amplifies or mitigates blame. Such systematic processing should be particularly visible when people update their moral judgments. Using a novel experimental paradigm, we test two sets of predictions derived from the socially-regulated blame perspective and compare them with predictions from a motivated-blame perspective. Studies 1-4 demonstrate (across student, internet, and community samples) that moral perceivers systematically grade updated blame judgments in response to the strength of new causal and mental information, without anchoring on initial evaluations. Further, these studies reveal that perceivers update blame judgments symmetrically in response to exacerbating and mitigating information, inconsistent with motivated-blame predictions. Study 5 shows that graded and symmetric blame updating is robust under cognitive load. Lastly, Study 6 demonstrates that biases can emerge once the social requirement for warrant is relaxed—as in the case of judging outgroup members. We conclude that social constraints on blame judgments render the normal process of blame well calibrated to causal and mental information, and biases may appear when such constraints are absent.

scholarly journals The Cognitive Processes Underlying Moral Judgment Across Development

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Chalik ◽  
Jay Joseph Van Bavel ◽  
Marjorie Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Moral Belief ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Made In

Some moral philosophers have suggested that a basic prohibition against intentional harm ought to be at the core of moral belief systems across human societies. Yet, experimental work suggests that not all harm is created equal—people often respond more negatively to harm that occurs among fellow social group members, rather than between members of different groups. The present two studies investigated how concerns about social group membership factor into the moral judgment system. Adults (N = 111, Study 1) and children (N = 110, Study 2) evaluated instances of inter- and intra-group harm under varying levels of cognitive load. Both children and adults responded more slowly to intergroup harm than to intragroup harm. Furthermore, adults under cognitive load rated intergroup harm more leniently than intragroup harm, but adults who were not under load rated the two types of behaviors similarly. These findings suggest that across development, evaluations of intergroup harm rely more heavily on conscious deliberation than evaluations of intragroup harm. Thus, people's evaluations of harmful behaviors are made in light of information about the social category membership of the people involved.

scholarly journals Moral metaphorical effect of cleanliness on immoral workplace behaviors

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 183449092110342
Author(s):  
Gang Huangfu ◽  
Lu Li ◽  
Zhen Zhang ◽  
Cheng Sheng
Keyword(s):  
Field Experiment ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Clean Environment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Workplace Behaviors

Cleanliness connotes cleanness, hygiene, and beauty. Physical cleanliness is also a metaphor for moral purity, as proposed in recent literature. However, cleanliness means not only physical cleanliness but also environmental cleanliness. The article proposes that environmental cleanliness and physical self-cleanliness may metaphorically influence immoral behaviors in the workplace, and their effects may be different. The current study conducted a 2 (environmental cleanliness: clean vs. dirty) × 3 (self-cleanliness: hands-cleansing vs. face-cleansing vs. non-cleansing) between-subjects field experiment with employees as participants in a Chinese enterprise. One-hundred-seventy-seven employees volunteered to participate in the experiment. It was found that a clean workplace, rather than physical self-cleansing, renders harsh moral judgment regarding immoral workplace behaviors. The participants were less willing to accept immoral workplace behaviors in a clean environment than in a dirty environment, while self-cleanliness (hands-cleansing or face-cleansing vs. non-cleansing) had no significant influence on employees’ moral judgments of immoral workplace behaviors. In addition, the significant effects of environmental cleanliness were found in all the ten dimensions of immoral workplace behaviors. The findings reveal the metaphorical association between environmental cleanliness and the concept of higher social moral norms, and confirm that environmental cleanliness is a key factor leading to moral metaphorical effects. This result provides unique insight to the social significance of environmental cleanliness, and has important implications to prevent immoral workplace behaviors. A theoretical framework is proposed to explain why environmental cleanliness is more likely to affect moral judgment involving organizational interests than self-cleanliness. Considering most previous research has been done with samples of college students, this study is especially valuable through a field experiment on actual employees.

Individual Journalistic Bias Leads to Public Propaganda

2021 ◽  
pp. 140-154
Author(s):  
Young Joon Lim ◽  
Jennifer Lemanski
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Media Content ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Cultural Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Intuitionist Model

The social intuitionist model (SIM) highlights the superiority of intuitive emotions over reasoning process in the link of moral judgment and reasoning, addressing the issues of private or individual intuitions of moral judgments on an interpersonal communication level. While the SIM can be applied to explain why journalists are biased and prone to producing intuitive news stories, the hierarchy of influences model (HIM) offers a theoretical framework that affects media content, which journalists and media organizations create in a social and cultural approach to propaganda. This chapter explores how the integration of SIM and HIM demonstrates the path to propagandistic news stories manufactured by intuitive journalists and their biased news outlets on the macro social structure level.

Do People Believe That They Are More Deontological Than Others?

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (8) ◽  
pp. 1308-1320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming-Hui Li ◽  
Li-Lin Rao
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Social Exchange ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Construal Level Theory ◽  
The Self ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Protective Mechanism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Protected Values

The question of how we decide that someone else has done something wrong is at the heart of moral psychology. Little work has been done to investigate whether people believe that others’ moral judgment differs from their own in moral dilemmas. We conducted four experiments using various measures and diverse samples to demonstrate the self–other discrepancy in moral judgment. We found that (a) people were more deontological when they made moral judgments themselves than when they judged a stranger (Studies 1-4) and (b) a protected values (PVs) account outperformed an emotion account and a construal-level theory account in explaining this self–other discrepancy (Studies 3 and 4). We argued that the self–other discrepancy in moral judgment may serve as a protective mechanism co-evolving alongside the social exchange mechanism and may contribute to better understanding the obstacles preventing people from cooperation.

Influence of Structured Group Experience on Moral Judgments of Preschoolers

1983 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 587-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
James D. Moran ◽  
Gayle O'Brien
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Day Care ◽  
Nursery School ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Personal Property ◽  
Formal Program ◽  
The Social ◽  
Group Experience ◽  
At Home

Moral judgment stories were read to preschoolers who were either in day care or nursery school ( n = 20) or at home, not attending any formal program ( n = 15). The group-care children focused more on intention in contexts involving injury to another person but tended to be more consequence-based in contexts involving personal property damage than the group at home. These data suggest the influence of the social environment on moral judgments.

scholarly journals The effect of cognitive load on intent-based moral judgment

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Martin ◽  
Marine Buon ◽  
Fiery Andrews Cushman
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Causal Responsibility ◽  
Developmental Shift ◽  
Two Factors

When making a moral judgment, people largely care about two factors: Who did it (causal responsibility), and did they intend to (intention)? Since Piaget’s seminal studies we have known that as children mature they gradually place greater emphasis on intention, and less on mere bad outcomes, when making moral judgments. Today we know that this developmental shift has several signature properties. Recently, it has been shown that when adults make moral judgments under cognitive load they exhibit a pattern similar to young children; that is, their judgments become notably more outcome-based. Here, we show that all of the same signature properties that accompany the outcome-to-intent shift in childhood characterize the “intent-to-outcome” shift obtained under cognitive load in adults. These findings hold important implications for current theories of moral judgment.

scholarly journals The moral judgment of unconditional honesty

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Levine ◽  
Sarah Jensen ◽  
Michael White
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Information Acquisition ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Total N ◽  
Moral Goodness ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Error

Four main experiments (and six supplementary experiments, total N = 6970) document a preference for unconditional honesty: people believe it is more ethical for communicators to tell the truth without finding out the social consequences of doing so than to find out how their honesty affects others before communicating. However, people also believe that communicators should condition their decisions on the social consequences of truth-telling (and lie when truth-telling causes harm) when the consequences of truth-telling are known. We suggest that these seemingly inconsistent preferences are driven by the belief that moral actors should strive to avoid moral error more than they should strive to optimize moral goodness. This research deepens our understanding of people’s preferences for moral principles, sheds light on how information acquisition influences moral judgments, and explains how people can genuinely believe that honesty is the best policy, while also recognizing that lying is often ethical.

Is Empathy Required for Making Moral Judgments?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Deigh
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Psychopathic Personality ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Psychological Profile ◽  
Main Thesis ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Additional Support

This essay is a study of the nature of moral judgment. Its main thesis is that moral judgment is a type of judgment defined by its content and not its psychological profile. The essay arrives at this thesis through a critical examination of Hume’s sentimentalism and the role of empathy in its account of moral judgment. The main objection to Hume’s account is its exclusion of people whom one can describe as making moral judgments though they have no motivation to act on them. Consideration of such people, particularly those with a psychopathic personality, argues for a distinction between different types of moral judgment in keeping with the essay’s main thesis. Additional support for the main thesis is then drawn from Piaget’s theory of moral judgment in children.

Effect of Power on Moral Judgment

1978 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 387-394
Author(s):  
Russell Hamby
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Low Power ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Factorial Design ◽  
High Power ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Need For Power ◽  
Experimenter Effects

Ambiguous effects of power on attributions of moral responsibility for an accident are interpreted to result from the intervening effects of need for power, which is aroused by the anticipation of exercising power over another. 160 subjects from introductory social psychology classes participated in a questionnaire-type experiment comparing effects of high/low carelessness, severe/minor consequences, and high/low power of the attributor in a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design. In a follow-up experiment 30 subjects were assigned to conditions of high or low power, and their needs for power and moral attributions were measured. High power seemed to arouse need for power, which was curvilinearly related to moral judgments. Those high and low in need for power attributed more moral responsibility to the perpetrator of an accident than those with moderate levels of need for power. The results suggest complicated models of both moral judgments and experimenter effects related to the level or arousal of motivations.

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