Moral Psychology Resources

Why Create Groups?

2011-12-08T19:16:00.001-08:00

One of the more basic questions in social, and moral, psychology is the one asked in the title: why create groups? Different scholars have answered this question in different (and not exclusive) ways:

Tajfel and Turner (1986) argued that groups provide social support, fulfill emotional needs for acceptance and belonging, and guide behavior;
Crocker and Luhtanen (1990) argued that group membership can be a source of (collective) self-esteem;
Turner and Reyolds (2012, p. 401) argued that group membership helps individuals to distinguish themselves from others.
Abrams and Hogg (1988) argued that group membership helps to provide a coherent self-concept and to establish meaningful social roles.

Unfortunately, these positive functions of group membership can also be associated with discrimination and outgroup derogation (Abrams & Hogg, 1988).

On being loud and proud: Non-conformity and counter-conformity to group norms

2011-10-09T20:13:00.000-07:00

Matthew Hornsey, Louise Majkut, Deborah Terry, and Blake McKimmie's 2003 article examines the conditions under which University of Queensland students in favor of legal recognition of gay couples or in favor of a government apology to the Aborigines would act on these attitudes either publicly or privately. They specifically analyzed the roles of moral conviction, perceived societal support, and perceived support by the rest of the student body. They found that, in general, a strong moral basis for the attitude, perceived societal opposition, and perceived group support correlated positively with intention to act, both privately and publicly. Interestingly, intention to act publicly was sometimes greater than intention to act privately and group support sometimes had no effect at all.

Social Psychological Perspective on ACT UP's Tactics

2011-10-09T20:08:00.000-07:00

In Gould’s Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight Against AIDS, differentemotions privilege different acts of contention. Gould, for example, directlylinks anger to ACT UP’s use of nonviolent direct action. In Gould’s account,members of ACT UP believed that anger would inspire direct action andexplicitly encouraged anger in order to sustain their own and others' participation. Gould argues that members of ACT UP embraced these tactics andthe anger that inspired them because doing so provided a more effectivealternative to less confrontational tactics already in use by otherorganizations. This anger, sustained by the emotion-work of ACT UP members,served to sustain both ACT UP and its cause.

However, as Gould discusses, emotions exist within a set of frames, includingpolitical ideology, social-normative assumptions, and identity. ThroughoutGould’s account, these frames shape not only which emotions are relevant butthe actions that these emotions privilege and the targets of these actions. Itis not clear, however, how emotions interact with these frames—whether they reflectthem, amplify them, or transform them. Underlying this ambiguity in Gould’stext is an ambiguous account of the indeterminacy of emotions. Focusing onanger and emotions that moderate the effects of anger, I will here suggest adefinition of emotion as modular frame that both fits Gould’s evidence andgenerates a set of testable hypotheses that could render her model applicableto a range of other contentious movements.

In Gould’s account, emotions reflect existing frames and help motivate but do not restrict action. I argue that emotions both create new frames and directly cause action, althoughthey do so in coordination with wider frames.Specifically, emotions frame personal and social goals. Emotions are intimatelybound to—and may even be partially constituted by—appraisals of whether a goalcan or should be achieved, how much control the actor has over goalachievement, and the actor’s ability to cope with achievement ornon-achievement of these goals.

Anger, for example, tends to arise when another individual’s goals areinterfering with yours, when you believe that they have control over theiractions, and when you believe that you cannot tolerate (cope with) interference. This pattern tends to hold even when individuals are experiencinganger as group members rather than simply as individuals.

Last, anger, like all emotions, can be instantaneous and, to a degree,transferable. If you see an angry person, you form a theory about what they arethinking and feeling that is based on the appraisals described above. If youidentify with that person, you can adopt those appraisals as your own evenbefore you have experienced their situation for yourself.

ACT UP deliberately framed events in terms of the core narrative of anger,creating an amplifying resonance between sociopolitical beliefs andinstantaneous emotion. ACT UP, for example, shifted blame for the epidemic fromthe gay community to the government, arguing that the gay community hadresponded to the virus by developing safe sex practices while government actorshad callously refused to act or acted in a way that further threatened thehealth and safety of the gay community. Further, they made anger normative,encouraging its display and privileging demonstrations of anger overdemonstrations of other, potentially frame-threatening, emotions. It wasimpossible to be a member of ACT UP and not feel anger, impossible to be a member of ACTUP and not see the epidemic, and actors in the epidemic, through the lens ofanger.

By choosing to embrace anger (over alternatives) ACT UP members were driven todirect action. Anger involves the appraisal that another person’s actions (oryour own past actions, or a group’s actions, or the actions of God or fate) areintolerable. Both nonviolent and violent resistance are possible results ofanger, but an emphasis on resistance is almost assured if anger is given freereign.

Hope and anger interact when an individual or group is deciding when, where,and who to resist. Anger establishes threat and the intentionality of theoffending actor, but hope provides a sense of the angry person’s agency, theirability to affect change. ACT UP managed hope, framing nonviolent direct actionas the most effective action and framing other tactics as hopeless. When hopewas lost, some people surrendered anger, finding numbness or renewed compassion. Numbness shifted focus to inaction, leading activists to both leave ACT UP and to resist re-involving themselves in the fight to manage the AIDS crisis. Renewed compassion shifted focus away from political activism and instead emphasized helping others to cope with the epidemic, leading former ACT UP members to volunteer to care for AIDS victims. The loss of hope also brought a redirection of anger, emphasizing the perceived failings of individual ACT UP members. This new anger,expressed as a sense of betrayal, both amplified existing divisions and spurredthe emergence of new social identities.

Moralization was evident in both attitudes towards government actors and,later, attitudes toward ACT UP members. By emphasizing the intentional,negative, and intolerable actions of others, anger can, when appropriatelyframed, create the perception that an individual’s bad behavior reflectsessential badness. It is associated with increased stereotyping, both automaticand more deliberate.

Anger however, only tends to moralize around justice and fairness, not othermarkers of “badness” like pollution or weakness. Interestingly, anger may notonly have focused the attention of ACT UP members on justice and fairness, butmay have focused governmental attention on these issues as well. When medicaland scientific officials paid attention, even defensively, to ACT UP’s anger,they may have been more attentive to ACT UP’s justice and fairness frames andit is possible that a combination of anger and hope encouraged frame bridgingbetween these officials and members of ACT UP.

References:

Chapter Two; “New Feelings and an Expanding Political Horizon After Hardwick;”“Individuals and the Social Space for Militancy.”
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Chapter Seven; “From Despair to Activism;”“Act Up’s Antidote to Despair”
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Introduction. “New Curves in the EmotionalTurn;” “Affect, Feelings, and Emotions.”
Kuppens, Peter, Van Mechelen, Iven, Smits, Dirk J. M., and De Boeck, Paul. “TheAppraisal Basis of Anger: Specificity, Necessity, and Sufficiency ofComponents.” Emotion. 2003:3(3). 254-269.
Mackie, Diane M., Devos, Thierry, and Smith, Eliot. “Intergroup Emotions:Explaining Offensive Action Tendencies in an Intergroup Context.” Journal ofPersonality and Social Psychology. 2000. 79(4):602-616.
Smith, Eliot R., Seger, Charles R., Mackie, Diana M. “Can Emotions Be TrulyGroup Level? Evidence Regarding Four Conceptual Criteria.” Journal ofPersonality and Social Psychology. 2007. 93(3):443.
Snow, David, Rochford, E. Burke, Worden, Steven K., Benford, Robert D. “FrameAlignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation.” AmericanSociological Review, 1986. 51(4):477
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Chapter 2; “The Affects and Emotions ofFraming;” “Aids as Genocide: Linking Fear, Grief, and Anger to Action.”
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Chapter 4; “ACT UP and a New EmotionalHabitus;” “Grief into Anger.”
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Chapter 7; “What Despair Does;” “ForbiddingDespair.”
Gould, Deborah. “Moving Politics.” Chapter 6; “Moralism.”

Prejudice and Motivations to Respond Without Prejudice

2011-10-09T19:00:00.000-07:00

Over the last three decades, the category of low-prejudicedindividuals has been revealed to be a diverse one. An individual mayhave low levels of explicit prejudice and high levels of implicit prejudice,low levels of explicit and implicit prejudice, or, more rarely, higher levelsof explicit and low levels of implicit prejudice (Petty and Brinol,2009). Further, in a society where both prejudice and egalitariangoals are common, individuals may seek to avoid acting on existing prejudices(Plant and Devine, 1998). Some individuals may do so to avoidexternal censure and to conform to social norms, some individuals may do sobecause it is personally important to them to feel nonprejudiced, otherindividuals may do so for a combination of internal and externalreasons. Different motivations are correlated to differentself-regulation strategies and each strategy can have different effects onlevels of explicit and implicit prejudice (Devine, Amodio, Harmon-Jones, & Vance,2002) and associated behaviors towards out-group members (Butz & Plant,2009). The self-regulation strategies themselves may directlyinfluence processing of messages by stigmatized sources.

Participants that score high on Plant and Devine’s InternalMotivation to Respond Without Prejudice Scale and low on their ExternalMotivation to Respond Without Prejudice Scale demonstrate lower levels ofimplicit and explicit prejudice. Plant and Devine’s InternalMotivation to Respond Without Prejudice Scale asks participants to report theextent to which they agree with the following statements:

I attempt to act in nonprejudiced ways toward Black peoplebecause it is personally important to me.
According to my personal values, using stereotypes aboutBlack people is OK.
I am personally motivated by my beliefs to benonprejudiced toward Black people.
Because of my personal values, I believe that usingstereotypes about Black people is wrong.
Being nonprejudiced toward Black people is important to myself-concept.

The External Motivation to Respond Without Prejudice Scaleasks participants to report the extent to which they agree with the followingstatements:

Because of today's PC (politically correct) standards I tryto appear nonprejudiced toward Black people.
I try to hide any negative thoughts about Black people inorder to avoid negative reactions from others.
If I acted prejudiced toward Black people, I would beconcerned that others would be angry with me.
I attempt to appear nonprejudiced toward Black people inorder to avoid disapproval from others.
I try to act nonprejudiced toward Black people because ofpressure from others.

Solely internal motivation to respond without prejudice(IMS) is negatively correlated with both explicit, self-reported prejudice andimplicitly measured prejudice. Interestingly, the activation ofegalitarian goals is a known mediator of the negative correlation betweenscoring high on the IMS alone and demonstrating lower levels of implicitprejudice, suggesting that this correlation occurs at least in part because ofthe moment to moment efforts of research participants. Solelyexternal motivation to respond without prejudice (EMS) is positively correlatedwith both explicitly measured and implicitly measured prejudice.

Individuals high in IMS alone, high in both EMS and IMS, andsolely high in EMS have distinct motivations and abilities to regulate theirprejudiced attitudes. For example, individuals high in IMS may putless effort into regulating their automatic prejudiced attitudes out of theassumption that they are already doing so, that doing so should not requiregreat effort, or out of a conscious concern for more deliberative attitudes. However,when Fehr and Sassenberg (2010) informed their German participants that theyhad demonstrated implicit prejudice towards Arabs on an IAT test, theirparticipants high in IMS alone learned to efficiently reduce thisprejudice. Other studies have demonstrated that individuals high inIMS alone will pursue opportunities to train themselves to reduce theirprejudice but will not engage this training in an effortful way until informedof failure (Plant & Devine, 2009). This suggests that unless individualshigh in IMS alone believe that they will behave in a prejudiced way, they mayeither a) not elaborate messages attributed to a stigmatized source or b) notnotice that they are elaborating these messages in a biased way.

Taking a more careful look at the motivations underlyingself-regulation of prejudiced behavior may reveal patterns of motivation thatmoderate motivation to elaborate. The items of the InternalMotivation to Respond Without Prejudice Scale and the External Motivation toRespond without Prejudice Scale are correlated with another scale, created byLegault and colleagues, that describes six categories of motivation to benonprejudiced. Their Motivation to be Nonprejudiced Scale (MNPS)divides these motivations into the intrinsic, the integrated, the identified,the introjected, the external, and the amotivated (Legault, Green-Demers,Grant, & Chung, 2007).

Items in the intrinsic motivation category describe amotivation to act in a non-prejudiced way because it is “enjoyable orsatisfying.” Items related to intrinsic motivation on theirMotivation to be Nonprejudiced Scale (MNPS) include:

Enjoyment relating to other groups.
Pleasure of being open-minded.
For the joy I feel when learning about new people.
For the interest I feel when discovering people/groups.

This measure correlates positively to the IMS at a p <.01. It also marginally negatively correlates with theEMS. It negatively correlates with both explicit and implicitmeasurements of racism and sexism (using p-values between .05 and .001).

Moving from intrinsic to external motivations forself-regulation, Legault and colleagues next describe those who demonstrateintegrated regulation. Integrated regulation “occurs when personallyendorsed goals, values, and needs are fused with the self . . . that is, theyalign with other needs and values of the overarching value system.” Measures ofthis form of self-regulation include:

I appreciate what understanding adds to my life.
Striving to understand others is part of who I am.
Because I am tolerant and accepting of difference.
Because I am an open-minded person.
I place an importance on egalitarian beliefs.

Like the previous measures of intrinsic regulation, thismeasure positively correlates with the IMS at p < .001 and is marginallynegatively correlated with the EMS. It is also significantlynegatively correlated with explicit measures of racism and sexism in differentstudies conducted by Legault and colleagues. It is negativelycorrelated with scores on a Race IAT at p < .01.

Identified regulation is defined as having “goals that aresought because they are valued or seen as important” and demonstrates similarcorrelations with the IMS and EMS scales as well as with implicit and explicitmeasures of prejudice. Its items include:

Because I value nonprejudice.
Because I admire people who are egalitarian.
I place an importance on egalitarian beliefs.
Because tolerance is important to me.

It is also possible that identified individuals may exhibita moral credentialing effect, feeling less-motivated to control prejudice ifthey feel that they normally act without prejudice. Moralcredentialing can increase prejudiced behaviors for individuals with bothinternal and external motivations to respond without prejudice (Monin, 2001).

Introjected regulation is defined by “[e]xternal incentives. . . [that] have been turned inward but not truly accepts as one’sown.” “[T]his type of self-regulation feels quitecontrolling. Introjected behaviors are ego involved and performed toavoid guilt or to enhance contingent self-worth” (Legault et al.,2007). In 2002, Devine et al. suggested that individuals that arehigh in both internal and external motivation to respond without prejudicewould fall into the introjected category. This statement is notsupported by Legault and colleagues’ research. Only marginalpositive correlations to the IMS and EMS were found. In addition,Legault and Green found that introjected regulation was marginally negativelycorrelated with implicit racial prejudice as measured by the IAT.

It is possible that their measures correspond to a differentset of motivations that those held by high EMS and IMSparticipants. Their measures of introjected regulation included:

Because I feel like I should avoid prejudice.
Because I would feel guilty if I were prejudiced.
Because I would feel ashamed if I were prejudiced.

Monteith, Mark, and Ashburn-Nardo (2010) found thatparticipants who were more focused on the possibility of behaving badlyreported both more frequent experiences with acting in a prejudiced way andless effort to act in less-prejudiced ways in the future.

Describing their participants high in IMS and EMS, Plant andDevine (2009) found that, when given the opportunity to engage in training toreduce their level of prejudice, these participants put forth more effort thanparticipants that were high in IMS alone. In contrast, Amodio,Devine, and Harmon Jones (2008) demonstrated that participants high in both IMSand EMS are less effective at regulating implicit prejudice than individualshigh in IMS alone, as measured by neural activity in response to a variety ofrace-based primes. They further argue that conflict monitoring,awareness of conflict measured at the level of neural activity, accounts forthese differences, with high IMS individuals being more likely to notice theconflict between a prejudiced reaction and their egalitarianvalues. This research suggests that high IMS individuals are betterat self-monitoring their implicit attitudes, at least in certaincontexts. Individuals high in both EMS and IMS, however, may stillexperience sufficient conflict to prompt prejudice-reduction strategies.

The next category on Legault and colleagues’ scale is“external regulation” (2007). Individuals that demonstrate externalregulation do so because they wish to avoid social reprimand or to earnpraise. Items in this category of the scale include:

So that people will admire me for being tolerant.
Because I don’t want people to think I’m narrow-minded.
Because biased people are not well-liked.
Because I get more respect/acceptance when I act unbiased.

Surprisingly, these measures correlated positively with boththe IMS and the EMS. The former correlates only marginally and thelatter correlates when p < .01. This category marginallycorrelates positively with explicit and implicit racial measures, although itcorrelates negatively for explicit measures of sexism. Only onesignificant correlation was found. Explicit racism and externalmotivation correlated at p < .05. There is no evidence that theseindividuals would elaborate messages attributed to a stigmatized messageauthor, but the lack of significant correlations with the IMS and EMS waspuzzling.

It could be that high EMS participants may includeindividuals that would fall into Legault and colleagues’ last category,amotivated individuals. Amotivated individuals “cannot perceive arelationship between their behavior and that behavior’s subsequent outcome.”Measures include:

I don’t know; it’s not a priority.
I don’t know; I don’t really bother trying to avoidit.
I don’t know why; I think it’s pointless.
I don’t know, it’s not very important to me.

This significantlypositively correlates with explicit and implicit prejudice. It does notsignificantly correlate with either the IMS or the EMS, but it does show amarginal positive correlation with the EMS and a marginal negative correlationwith the IMS.

Both individuals solely high in EMS and high in both EMS andIMS are less able to regulate their implicit prejudices. When askedto suppress their stereotypes, high EMS individuals exhibit a rebound effectand subsequent depletion of their ability to suppress stereotypes that is notexperienced by high IMS individuals (Butz and Plant, 2009). Thissuggests that even individuals that are high in either external or bothinternal and external motivation to respond without prejudice may lack theability to do so.

Empathy and Helping

2011-10-09T17:46:00.000-07:00

The greater a person’s empathy with an individual, the morelikely he is to help that individual unfairly:

“In one study, participants who were encouraged to feel moreempathy towards a fictitious child with a fatal illness were more likely toassign the child to receive immediate help, at the expense of other childrenwho had been waiting for a longer time, were more needy, or had more to gainfrom the help (Batson et al., 1995)” (Haidt & Kesibir, 2009).

“On a larger scale, charitable giving follows sympathy, notthe number of people in need. One child who falls down a well, or who needs anunusual surgery, triggers an outpouring of donations if the case is covered onthe national news (see Loewenstein and Small, 2007 for a review). Lab studiesconfirm the relative power of sympathy over numbers: Small, Loewenstein, andSlovic (2007) found that a charitable appeal with a single identifiable victimbecame less powerful when statistical information was added to the appeal. Evenmore surprising, Vastfjall, Peters, and Slovic (in prep) found that acharitable appeal with one identifiable victim became less effective when asecond identifiable victim was added” (Haidt & Kesibir, 2009).

Judging a Stereotyped Other

2011-10-09T17:41:00.000-07:00

Clark et al. demonstrated one mechanism by which theirparticipants came to have more confidence in stereotype-consistentthoughts. Participants with greater confidence in these thoughts weremore likely to use them when making judgments. Specifically, Clark et al.examined the association of higher socioeconomic status with higherstandardized test performance and lower socioeconomic status with lowerperformance in elementary school. In two experiments, Clark et al. firstrandomly assigned participants to view the-in fact fictitious-test results of achild getting either 90% or 20% of the answers correct. In bothexperiments, they then randomly assigned participants a biography indicatingthe child’s either higher or lower socioeconomic status. In bothexperiments, Clark et al. asked participants to rate their confidence in theirthoughts about the child and to recommend that the child be placed in either agifted or a remedial program.

Participants in the first experiment, which followed theprocedure described above, tended to have more confidence in their thoughtswhen they learned that the higher performing child was also from a family withhigher socioeconomic status or when they learned that the lower performingchild was from a family with lower socioeconomic status. Thoseparticipants also tended to makes stronger recommendations for the child’sacademic future than participants who were presented with a high-performingstudent from a lower socioeconomic status family or vice-versa. Clark etal.’s participants’ degree of thought confidence mediated the relationshipbetween the stereotype consistency of the information and the extremity oftheir judgments. A mediating variable is a variable that helps, instatistical analysis, to account for the relationship between two othervariables. In other words, participants with greater thought confidencebecause they were presented with stereotype consistent information also tendedto make more extreme recommendations.

In the second experiment, some participants were randomlyassigned a distraction condition. In this condition, they were forced tocarry out an additional task while reading and evaluating information aboutthe-in fact fictitious-child. When participants were distracted,participants were less accurate when recalling the child’s test scores. They tended to recall the scores of a low-performing higher socioeconomicstatus child as being better than that child’s actual scores and they tended torecall the scores of a high-performing lower socioeconomic status child asbeing worst than that child’s actual scores. Participants under thedistraction condition reported less confidence in their thoughts about thechild than did participants who were not distracted. Participants that weredistracted by an additional task also made weaker recommendations regarding thechild’s academic future as well. However, they were more biased bysocioeconomic status. This relationship was mediated by their biasedrecall of the child’s test scores. In other words, participants underdistraction conditions tended to believe that children from lower socioeconomicstatus families or higher socioeconomic status families scored poorly or wellrespectively and this belief helps, in statistical analysis, to explain thefact that participants tended to recommend lower socioeconomic status studentsfor remedial programs and higher socioeconomic status students for giftedprograms.

Judging the Self

2011-10-09T17:38:00.001-07:00

According to Gilbert and Malone there are four main factorsthat can lead to inaccurate beliefs about others and oneself: low levels ofawareness of situational forces, unrealistic expectations, inflatedcategorizations and incomplete corrections for perceived errors (1995, p. 8). Low levels of awareness may be due to the invisibility of those causalinfluences on human behavior that are temporally and spatially distant (1995,p. 10). Even if the causal influences are proximal, the observer musthave a theory of influences on human behavior in order to interpret theseinfluences. Here, Gilbert and Malone’s first and second factors interact. In their account, individuals regularly underestimate incentives, basicsocial pressures, and egocentric biases (1995, p. 11-12). Egocentricbiases occur when individuals do not fully understand why they perceive acertain situation in a specific way. Unable to fully comprehend thereasons for their evaluations, individuals may either fall back on a naïverealism in which their impressions of objects are qualities of the objectsthemselves. Alternatively, they may simply be unable, throughintrospection, to understand the origin of their own reactions and thus mayactively apply a theoretical perspective that they believe to be accurate butare unable to test (1995, p. 11-12).

Individual self-understandings tend to be highly biased. In 1993, Sedikides demonstrated that, for his participants,self-enhancement and consistency motives were more influential thandiagnosticity motives (cited in Baumeister, 2010, 149). Acknowledgingsituational influences could undermine both positive accomplishments and theconsistency with which one believes that one can achieve these accomplishments.

At the same time, it is not clear how these biases in self-judgment would biasjudgments of other people. Judgments of others are typically morerealistic. For example, in 1988 Taylor and Brown demonstrated that“people overestimate their successes and good traits . . . underestimate theirfailures and bad traits) . . . overestimate how much control they have overtheir lives and their fate . . . [and are] unrealistically optimistic,believing that they are more likely than other people to experience goodoutcomes and less likely to experience bad ones” (cited in Baumeister, 2010, p.150). Further, as Zuckerman demonstrated in 1979, people tend to look tosituation causes to explain their own failures (cited in Baumeister, 2010, 150)but do not extend the same courtesy to others (Gilbert and Malone, 1995). When individuals do admit to having negative traits they “persuadethemselves that their good traits are unusual whereas their bad traits arewidely shared” (Baumeister, 2010, 150).

It is possible that judgments of self influence lay theories that are appliedto both the self and the other. However, Gilbert and Malone point outother cognitive reasons for unrealistic expectations-the availability biasleads to inaccurate judgments of the typicality of certain behaviors (1995, p.13) and lay theories of situational influence can lead individuals tounderestimate even their own dispositions (1995, p. 14). Inflatedcategorization of behavior occurs because individuals seek to resolve ambiguityand thus see behavior as more strongly conforming to expectation than itactually does (1995, pg. 14). Last, individuals tend to make eithersituational or dispositional attributions based on the motives of the moment,and correcting for these attributions can be difficult (1995, p. 15-16).

Attitude-Behavior Consistency

2011-10-09T17:35:00.000-07:00

Attitude structure, as mapped through different measures ofattitude strength, influences attitude-behavior consistency. For example, theaccessibility of an attitude, the ease with which it comes to mind, has beenpositively correlated to voting behavior, consumer product choices, puzzlecompletion, and the choice to donate to charity (Fabrigar and Wegener, 2010, p.187-188.) To take another example, just believing that you’ve thoughtabout something can lead to greater certainty and with that certainty, greaterattitude-behavior consistency (Petty & Brinol, 2010, p. 241). Other,more general features of attitude structure, such as the content of knowledgestructures and the valence of evaluations, have been respectively correlated toinfluence on instrumental and consummatory behaviors (2010, p. 188). Inboth cases there is a match between the content of knowledge structures linkedto the attitude and the motivations in that particular situation.

Ambivalence is usually negatively correlated toattitude-behavior consistency (2010, p. 188-189). This is the case evenfor complex attitudes, which can include multiple evaluations of differentvalences. Normally, these attitudes may be considered “informative guideseven when the goal of the behavior has little direct relevance to any of thedimensions of knowledge (2010, p. 195), perhaps because they have been testedacross a variety of situations and are considered generally relevant. However, ambivalence decreases confidence in these attitudes, theirperceived situational relevance, and, in some cases, willingness to act. Less-complex attitudes may be even more affected (2010, p. 195).

According to Petty et al.’s Meta-Cognitive Model, the MCM,individual evaluations and knowledge structures may be “tagged” withmeta-evaluations of their likelihood, the confidence with which they should beheld, accuracy, and certainty (Petty & Brinol, 2010, p. 218-219). Ambivalence can cause clashes between attitudes which may be experiencedas discomfort and prompt an adjustment of these tags (2010, p. 219). Attitudes with meta-cognitive tags indicating certainty and confidenceshould be better correlated to behaviors both deliberative and automatic. Attitudes with tags indicating their weakness and personal lack ofconfidence in them should, eventually, cease to affect behavior. However,they may persist as implicit attitudes that affect automatic reactions (2010,p. 219).

Because attitudes can form by many routes, includingevaluative conditioning, heuristic, and elaborative processing (2010), it ispossible for behaviors to change attitudes. For example, “[a]ttitudeself-reports filled out in front of a mirror . . . better predict subsequentbehavior,” (Baumeister, 2010, p. 143) presumably biases attention toward thereflexive self. Further, participants who have recalled “extravertedversus introverted tendencies” (2010, p. 146) typically begin to think ofthemselves as introverted or extroverted which can lead to the expression of introvertedand extroverted behaviors (2010, p. 146). Role playing can also induceattitude change (Petty & Brinol, 2010, p. 221).

Moral Behavior

2011-10-09T17:32:00.001-07:00

Posts tagged with the “Moral Behavior” label examine the relationshipbetween moral attitudes and moral behavior. Some posts may explore attitudetheory in general.

Moral Convictions and Moral Distancing

2011-10-09T17:30:00.000-07:00

When people report that attitudes are an important part oftheir personal moral perspective, they are more likely to:

· physicallydistance themselves from people with different moral attitudes

· havedifficulty resolving conflicts with people who don’t share their moralconvictions.

These actions are independent of the content of the moralconviction—an individual who has a moral conviction that supports abortionrights will be as likely to withdraw from someone who disagrees with him as anindividual who has a moral conviction that opposes abortion rights (Bauman& Skitka, 2009, p. 344).

Moral Others

2011-10-09T17:26:00.001-07:00

Entries tagged with the “Moral Others” label look at moraljudgments of other people. What is judged? Behavior is judged yes, but also themorality of the members of different social categories. These entries will dealwith both observed and assumed moral differences between the self and theother.

Tag: Moral Others

The Private and Public Moral Self

2011-10-05T19:32:00.000-07:00

According to Baumeister, the heart of the self is reflexiveconsciousness (Baumeister 2010, p. 142). The object of this reflection,however, is somewhat mysterious. Who we are and what we will do is not agiven. We learn about ourselves by observing past and current behaviors andmaking predictions (Baumeister 2010, p. 142). However, only a few ofthese beliefs about the self “are active in focal awareness at any given time”(Baumeister 2010, p. 145). The presence of specific beliefs in focalawareness is moderated both by internal processes such as self-regulation(Baumeister, 2010, p. 143) and the extent to which awareness is focused on theself to the exclusion of other objects of awareness (Baumeister, 2010, p. 143). For example, as Duval and Wicklund found in 1972 attitude “self-reportsfilled out in front of a mirror are more accurate (in the sense that theybetter predict subsequent behavior) than those filled out with no mirrorpresent” (as cited in Baumeister, 2010, p. 143). Self-awareness canbring ongoing mental processes into the forefront of consciousness, intensifying,as Scheier and Carver found in 1977, either awareness of emotional reactions oremotional reactions themselves (as cited in Baumeister, 2010, p. 143). Increased self-awareness is also positively correlated to successfulself-regulation (Baumeister, 2010, p. 143). However, if individualsare engaged in behaviors that are at odds with their self-concept,self-awareness may be avoided (Baumeister, 2010, p. 144), either to avoidambivalence by acknowledging other values or to avoid incorporating thisbehavior into the self-concept.

The self, then, is, can be acted upon. Rather thanbeing a given, it is a flexible store of self-knowledge of varying degrees ofaccuracy and subject to revision or minimization in a variety of situations,social and non-social. For humans, at least, social situationspredominate, and, Baumeister writes, “[t]he first job of the self is to garnersocial acceptance” (as cited in Baumeister & Finkel 2010, p. 140). Social acceptance requires “self-understanding on things that connect [theself] to other people, including family, groups, country, and otherrelationships” (Baumeister, 2010, p. 140). When the self identifies witheach of these categories, relationships and roles are made salient (Baumeister,2010, p. 140). At another level of identification, the individual maylook to the group in order to learn about herself. Not only must anindividual seeking greater status or seeking to maintain status within thegroup understand the standards against which she is being judged but she mustfurther internalize these standards so that self-monitoring proceedsautomatically (Baumeister, 2010, p. 140).

People effortfully defend their private moral self-concept. As Haidt and Kesbir (2009) argue, "[w]hen people behave selfishly, they judge their ownbehavior to be more virtuous than when they watch the same behavior performedby another person." However, this pattern is not exhibited when participants are under cognitive load, suggesting that individual reappraisal of selfish action as virtuous is effortful and deliberate.

The presence of an audience, however, does increase prosocial behavior (Baumeister, 1982). Even the presence of security cameras, acting, perhaps, like the mirror in Duval and Wicklund (1972), increased helping behaviors (Van Rompay, Vonk, & Fransen, in press, cited in Haidt & Kesebir, 2009). Indeed, if participants play a dictator game on a computer that has been given "stylized eyespots on the desktop background" they will give more generously (Haidt & Kesebir, 2009).

Curiously, when the audience can be deceived, individuals will often fall back on behaviors that are selfish, not prosocial, and dishonest. For example, "Batson,Thompson, Seuferling, Whitney, & Strongman, 1999) asked participantsto decide how to assign two tasks to themselves and another participant. One ofthe tasks was much more desirable than the other, and participants were given acoin to flip, in a sealed plastic bag, as an optional decision aid. Those whodid not open the bag assigned themselves the more desirable task 80-90% of thetime. But the same was true of participants who opened the bag and (presumably)flipped the coin. Those who flipped may well have believed, before the coinlanded, that they were honest people who would honor the coin’s decision: Aself-report measure of moral responsibility, filled out weeks earlier,correlated with the decision to open the bag, yet it did not correlate with thedecision about task assignment" (Haidt & Kesebir, 2009).

Privacy, then, can reduce the incidence of prosocial behaviors, even when these behaviors are supported by strong cultural mandates. In Japan, for example, "whenparticipants are placed in lab situations that lack the constant informalmonitoring and sanctioning systems of real life, cooperation rates in small groupsare low, even lower than those of Americans (Yamagishi, 2003)" (Haidt & Kesebir, 2009). It could be argued, however, that the social context of the laboratory would predictably be differently marked in context-sensitive collectivist cultures.

Moral Selves

2011-10-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

Posts tagged with the "Moral Selves" label discuss the private and public moral self.

Defining Morality as an Object of Study

2011-10-05T15:02:00.001-07:00

All entries tagged with thistitle examine different scholars and their approaches to studying morality.

Moral Convictions

2011-06-24T16:54:00.000-07:00

According to Skika and colleagues, people who haveidentified moral convictions will, likely, believe that these convictions applyto others and will, likely, be intolerant of those who do not share theseconvictions. They operationalize moral conviction by asking participantswhether their “feelings about X are a reflection of my core moral beliefs andconvictions” or asking them “to what extent is your attitude about X areflection of your core moral beliefs and convictions.” Moral convictions,then, are defined by the participant and not by the experimenter’s own moral orscientific theories. While I would imagine that those beliefs that participantslabel moral convictions may vary in their structure, function, and origins,Skitka and colleagues have established that, at least for their samples, whenparticipants identify beliefs as being central to their core moral beliefs andconvictions, they are identifying beliefs that have similar effects on socialperceptions, similar strengths, and similar effects on behavior.

According to Bauman and Skitka’s 2009 chapter, moralconvictions tend automatically inform an individual’s perception of their environment(physical and social) and themselves. Stimuli that are relevant to moralconvictions will be considered salient and these stimuli will be judged to havea moral significance that is objective, independent of the mind of theperceiver. Some individuals may challenge this automatic assumption, but theobjectivity of this moral salience is an implicit, automatic and perhapsunexamined, belief, and overcoming it can require more deliberate thought orthe activation of another, contradictory, automatic goal (Moskowitz & Li,2010).

Without the interference of any, what we can quicklyterm moral subjectivity goals, individuals will consider anymotivations, behaviors, and justifications for these behaviors to be bothnatural and normative responses. They will believe that all people shouldnaturally share these motivations, behaviors, and justifications for thesebehaviors. As Bauman and Skitka (2009, p. 342) argue “[P]eople experience moralsas if they were readily observable, objective properties of situations, or asfacts about the world . . . Unlike facts, however, morals carry prescriptiveforce . . . moral judgments both motivate and justify consequent behaviors.”

Moral convictions, Skitka and colleagues argue, are aspecial type of attitude that is imperfectly captured by previous attitudestrength research. Correlations in Sktika and Bauman (2008) between attitudeextremity and moral conviction, for example, were high enough that they couldbe tapping the same construct, but not so high as to make this likely. Thebehavioral implications of attitude and extremity and moral conviction werealso different, with the latter, unlike the former, being associated withsocial distancing from people who do not share the same attitude (Skitka etal., 2005).

Bauman and Skitka (2009) distinguish their research from other moral psychology research by arguing

argue that those other experiments require that participants judgewhether a person’s behavior, or the participant’s own decision, is moral orimmoral or right or wrong. These experiments themselves, then, are unable tosay whether their participants would have spontaneously made moral judgments.Those participants who spontaneously made moral judgments may behavedifferently from those who require experimenter-prompting. If this is the case,the experiment may have limited application outside of the laboratory. Manyexperiments, for example, involve trolley problems. Bauman (2008) confirmedthat “there is considerable variability in the extent that people perceive thedilemma to be a situation that involves a moral choice” (Bauman & Skitka,2009, p. 347).

Belief in a Just World: Blame or Help a Victim?

2011-05-09T07:56:00.001-07:00

Some women may be more likely to view other women as having acted irresponsibly when these women are the victims of violence that is due, in part, to their being women, rather than when they are the victims of violence in general. This could bolster their personal sense of agency and help them to believe that they will be able to avoid violence themselves. In another set of experiments, less economically successful members of an ethnic in-group were blamed for being irresponsible or personally derogated as lacking the competence or social skills necessary to achieve success.

Alternatively, victim-blaming and victim-derogation may occur when an out-group member is demanding that you or your in-group take action. Out-groups used in experimental manipulations have included the third world poor, people with AIDS, the handicapped, those who have suffered from tragic accidents, rape victims, and cancer patients (Furnham, 2003).

Belief in a Just World can be associated with pro-social behaviors. Bierhoff et al. (1991) compared two matched samples of individuals who offered first aid or did not offer first aid upon witnessing an accident. An accident would emphasize random, unjustified harm and it was hypothesized that those who were higher in Belief in a Just World would offer first aid in order to restore justice. They did so, at least when they were high in an internal locus of control and emphasized social responsibility and empathy.

A personal sense of being able to create justice or mitigate injustice may bolster one’s ability to recognize and respond to injustice. However, where personal ability to effect change is demonstrably low, individuals tend to actively minimize their attributions of injustice, blaming and derogating victims. How do people who are high in personal efficacy respond to situations where they have little power to restore or create justice? Would there be an interaction effect of justice centrality? Justice centrality could increase emotional distress, leading to more forceful denial. Alternatively, seeking justice in another domain, one in which the individual feels more able to achieve justice, may alleviate distress. Choice of strategy could depend on individual experience with seeking justice. Different strategies may be employed at different times, with attitudes to a particular injustice changing upon personal reflection.

Both justice-seeking and victim blaming and derogation may be independent of belief in a just world. For example, a person can believe that the world is both just and unjust, or even believe that their own actions are just and injustice, but still seek to accomplish some good, just as a person can believe that they have little power to achieve their goal but still try. Someone who is high in justice centrality and values justice highly may seek justice more frequently and more generally if they are lower in Belief in a Just World. Victim blaming and derogation can depend on one’s need for control, prejudice, and more basic self-interest.

Life’s recurring challenges and the fundamental dimensions: An integration and its implications for cultural differences and similarities

2010-09-26T18:06:00.000-07:00

Ybarra, Chan, Park, Burnstein, Monin, and Stanik's 2008article in the European Journal of Social Psychology (volume 38, pg 1083-1092),delineates "two psychological dimensions, one relevant to relationshipsand group life (communion . . .) and the other to skill acquisition, talent,and accomplishment (agency . . .)" (1083). They further argue thatjudgments of the communion dimension are stable relative to the agencydimensions. (1083).

For Ybarra et al., the communion dimension is comprised ofthose traits that effect success in “connecting with others and being accepted”(1083). These include “behavioral tendencies such as honesty and kindnessand those relevant to group living and a sense of right and wrong ininterpersonal relationships” (1083). The agency dimension is composed oftraits that effect success in “acquiring skills, talent, and status” (1084).These traits include “intelligence, competence, and diligence.”

The agentic traits, they argue, may be expressed lessfrequently and will be tied more closely to specific situations (1084). In contrast, people are always pressured to conform to group norms and areactively monitor for any failure to conform to group norms. Further,communion-related traits convey commitment to the group, wheras agency-relatedtraits are silent on the subject (1084). Laboratory researchperformed by Ybarra et al in 2001 indicated that research participants couldmore easily access traits related to communion than to agency, as measured by alexical decision task. Willis and Todorov, in 2006, found that theirresearch participants made “more reliable [Communion] than [Agency] judgments”after short exposure periods. Wojciszke, Bazinska and Jaworksi’s 1998research participants demonstrated greater interested in communion than inagency “in interpersonal judgment. Research subjects in studes by DeBruin and Van Lange in 1999, Lingle and Ostrom in 1979, Martijn, Spears, VanDer Pligt and Jakobs in 1992, Wojciske et al in 1998, and Ybarra in 2001 allhave weighed information related to communion more than information related toagency (1084).

The categories of traits were:

Communion (Positive)	Communion (Negative)	Agency (Positive)	Agency (Negative)
Trusting	Rude	Astute	Inept
Harmonious	Malevolent	Inventive	Hasty
Sympathetic	Crooked	Skillful	Sluggish
Trustworthy	Withdrawn	Knowledgeable	Ignorant
Sincere	Hypocritical	Talented	Irresponsible
Righteous	Injurious	Methodical	Lazy
Jocular	Resentful	Diligent	Mediocre
Polite	Tyrannical	Witty	Disorganized
Obedient	Snobbish	Attentive	Idiotic
Benevolent	Rebellious	Purposeful	Haphazard

White Americans' Genetic Lay Theories of Race Differences and Sexual Orientation: Their Relationship with Prejudice toward Blacks, and Gay Men and Lesbians

2010-08-28T15:24:00.000-07:00

Jayaratne, Ybarra, Sheldon, Brown, Feldbaum, Pfeffer and Petty's 2006 article:

"examined the relationship between White Americans’ genetic explanations, conceptualized as genetic lay theories, for perceived racial differences and for sexual orientation, and attitudes toward Blacks, and gay men and lesbians, respectively. Considering contrasting public discourse surrounding race and sexual orientation, we predicted that genetic lay theories would be associated with greater prejudice toward Blacks, but less prejudice toward gay men and lesbians. The ﬁndings, based on a representative sample of 600 White Americans, were consistent with expectations. Results are discussed in relation to the literature on essentialism and implicit theories of the malleability of traits. The present research broadens our view of lay theories by showing how they support either prejudice or tolerance, depending on the target group."

Parallels Between Competence- versus Morality-Related Traits and Individualistic Versus Collectivistic Values

2010-08-07T22:31:00.000-07:00

Bogdan Wojciszke's 1997 article argues that social judgements of competence are related to judgements of the value of individualistic traits and that social judgements of morality are related to social judgments of collectivistic traits. Interestingly, participants valued competence more highly for themselves than for others and morality more highly for others than for themselves. The abstract can be found below.

"The distinction between individualistic (IV) and collectivistic (CV) instrumental values was compared to the distinction between competence-related and moral personality traits. Study 1 (N=89 students) showed that IV referred mostly to competence and were self-profitable, whereas CV referred mostly to morality and were other-profitable in their nature. Therefore, IV were predicted to reach a relatively higher position in the value hierarchy formulated for the self, whereas CV were predicted to rank higher in the value hierarchy formulated for other people. Both hypotheses were confirmed in study 2 (N=118 high school students) in which subjects ordered 18 instrumental values of the Rokeach Value Survey according to their importance either for themselves, or for other people."

Traits examined include:

Ambitious
Capable
Cheerful
Courageous
Forgiving
Helpful
Honest
Imaginative
Independent
Intellectual
Logical
Loving
Obedient
Polite
Responsible
Self-controlled

Morality Based in Emotional and Affective Appraisals

2010-07-29T21:32:00.000-07:00

Some scholar believe that emotions are the basis of moral judgments. Emotions may arise from cognitive appraisals, but they may also influence cognitive appraisals. The majority of research to date has dealt with the latter influence of emotions. Emotions should be distinguished from Affect. Affect is general positivity and negativity. Some research has looked at the influence of positive versus neutral emotions on moral judgments.

For example, Valdesolo and DeSteno (2006), examined the moderating roles of positive affect on participant responses to the footbridge dilemma. In the footbridge dilemma, the experimenter presents the participant with a fictional scenario. The brakes and steering on a train have failed. The train is hurtling towards track workers, who will all be killed if the train is not redirected onto an empty track. A bystander on a bridge above the track notice a large switch that would redirect the train. Unfortunately, the switch can only be moved by a great force. The bystander looks around and sees a heavyset man who, if pushed onto the switch, would move the switch and divert the train. The bystander herself is not heavy enough to move the switch. She must decide whether to push the heavyset man onto the switch, killing him in the process, or let the train hit the track workers.

Many participants respond to this situation by refusing to push the heavyset man to his death, dooming the workers in the process. However, Valdesolo and DeSteno (2006) were able to get more participants to agree to push the man. They did this by having participants watch "a comedy video immediately before completing a questionnaire on which they judged the appropriateness of pushing a man to his (useful) death" (Haidt & Kesebir, 2009). The positive affect, the researchers believe, counteracted any negative affect aroused by the footbridge dilemma.

Positive affect (including positive emotions) can also increase helpful action. Experiments have examined the roles of "[g]ood weather (Cunningham, 1979), hearing uplifting or soothing music (Fried & Berkowitz, 1979; North, Tarrant & Hargreaves, 2004), remembering happy memories (Rosenhan, Underwood & Moore, 1974), eating cookies (Isen & Levin, 1972), and smelling a pleasant aroma such as roasted coffee (R. A. Baron, 1997)" (Haidt & Kesebir, 2009) on helping behaviors.

Other experiments have examined specific emotions more directly. One particularly influential emotion is disgust. Wheatley and Haidt (2005) "used post-hypnotic suggestion to implantan extra flash of disgust whenever participants read a particular word (“take”for half of the participants; “often” for the other half). Participants latermade harsher judgments of characters in vignettes that contained thehypnotically enhanced word, compared to vignettes with the nonenhanced word.Some participants even found themselves condemning a character in a story whohad done no wrong--a student council representative who “tries to take” or“often picks” discussion topics that would have wide appeal" (Haidt & Kesebir, 2009). Schnall, Haidt, Clore, and Jordan (2008) "extended thesefindings with three additional disgust manipulations: seating participants at adirty desk (vs. a clean one), showing a disgusting video clip (vs. a sad orneutral one), and asking participants to make moral judgments in the presenceof a bad smelling “fart spray” (or no spray)" (Haidt & Kesebir, 2009).

The influence of disgust was moderated by participant awareness of disgust, as measured by the "private body consciousness" scale (Miller, Murphy, & Buss, 1981). This scale measures "the degree to which people attend to their own bodily sensations. Thisfinding raises the importance of individual differences in the study ofmorality: Even if the ten literatures reviewed here converge on a generalpicture of intuitive primacy, there is variation in the degree to which peoplehave gut feelings, follow them, or override them (see Bartels, 2008; Epstein,Pacini, Denes-Raj, & Heier, 1996). For example, individual differences on ameasure of disgust sensitivity (Haidt, McCauley, & Rozin, 1994) has beenfound to predict participants’ condemnation of abortion and gay marriage, butnot their stances on non-disgust-related issues such as gun control andaffirmative action (Inbar, Pizarro, & Bloom, in press). Disgust sensitivityalso predicts the degree to which people condemn homosexuals, even among aliberal college sample, and even when bypassing self-report by measuringanti-gay bias using two different implicit measures (Inbar, Pizarro, Knobe,& Bloom, in press)"(Haidt & Kesebir, 2009).

It should be noted that the exact appraisal underlying the relationship between disgust and negative moral judgments is not necessarily well-understood. For example, in Inbar, Pizarro, Knobe, & Bloom (2009) disgust sensitivity predicted both attributions of intentionality to a situation that resulted in more gay men kissing in public and implicit negative attitudes towards gay men as measured by an IAT. However, it is not clear whether disgust is moderating sensitivity to moral purity and pollution or, more generally, sensitivity to the violation of social conventions.

Tapias, Glaser, Keltner, Vasquez, & Wicken (2007) further explore the relationship between disgust and attitudes towards gay people. In this study, the researchers primed participants with words related to homosexuality. They then tested participant reaction on an onstensibly unrelated experiment. Participants reacted to this experiment as if they had been primed directly with disgust, or so the authors argue. Participants who reported being more likely to experience disgust in their daily lives also reported higher levels of prejudice towards gay people.

Disgust is not the only emotion studied in the moral psychology literature. Anger, for example, has a powerful influence on moral judgments. Tapias et al. (2007) used the same methodology to demonstrate a relationship between anger and prejudice towards African Americans.

Morality as Cognition

2010-07-14T18:27:00.000-07:00

Marc Hauser's Moral Minds argues that an evolved moral faculty generates moral judgments.Moral judgments are defined as judgments of right and wrong, permitted andforbidden. This faculty applies innate principles that are biologicallydetermined. However, these principles allow for variation. Just as someprinciples of language are immutable and some are varying, so moral judgmentscan vary across cultures. Culture, in Hauser's terminology, sets theparameters. Nature gives us the principles.

Departing from other researchers in the field, Hauser argues that cognitiveappraisals that may precede or be driven by emotion are distinct from theappraisals made by the moral faculty. However, for Hauser, emotions maydirectly result from or accompany these appraisals and remain, in his account,an important area of inquiry.

Methodology: Supporting evidence comes from social-psychology-based laboratoryexperiments and surveys, behavioral economics, neuroscience, and evolutionarybiology. Hauser argues that while little evidence contradicts his thesis,more research is needed to ensure that it is the most parsimonious explanation.

Morality vs. Convention

2010-07-14T10:17:00.000-07:00

Shweder et al. (1987) contrast social conventions and moral rules cross-culturally. They concludethat the category of social convention emerges from the moral concept ofindividual rights and is not found in cultures that lack this concept.

Shweder et al. would give a more complete analysis if theydiscussed informal social rules. These rules are unmarked by culture and arelearned through mimicry. Peoplemay feel uncomfortable upon witnessing another person violating these informalrules. However, they are unlikely to know why.

Shweder et al. supporttheir conclusions using data collected via structured interviews in Hyde Park,IL and India.