PSY220: Morality

Moral Attitudes §

Reflection of one’s core moral beliefs and conditions of what’s right and wrong.

• Moral attitude are more consistent over time
• Moral attitudes are more resistant to change
• Moral attitudes are more predictive of behavior
• Moral attitudes has deeper ties to emotion

Measuring moral attitudes §

• “To what extend is your position on [attitude object]”

consequences of moral attitudes §

1. Greater political engagement (politics focus on a lot of moral issues)
2. Social & physical distance from those with opposing views
   • Study of moral attitude wiht social distancing
   • Method
     • Participants were gathered with known views on aborsion.
     • Participants went in a room with a chair that has a bag with pin that has the opposite stand of oborsion with the current participants.
     • Researchers ask participants to pull a chair next to them, then they measure the distance of the chairs
   • Result
     • The distance between the charis with opposing moral attitudes were larger
3. Inability to compromise (people don’t want to compromise of moral attitudes)
4. Lower good will and cooperativeness in groups with opposing views.
5. Greater distrust of legitimate authorities
6. Rejection of non-preferred outcomes
7. Greater acceptance of vigilantism and violence to achieve ends

Development §

Kohlberg’s Moral Development §

• Theory Kohlberg’s rational model ★
• Criticism:
  1. Too western
  2. Too male focused
  3. Emphasizes reasoning
  4. Assumes important decisions is done with conscious thinking

Social Intuitionist Model §

• Theory: Social Intuitionism, a modern model for morality
  • One of the sources of intuition is emotion

  Ex. Trolley Dilemma (列车选择) vs. Trolley Dilemma of pushing a person down the bridge to stop the train.

  • The second once is much more emotional (“killing a person”), therefore this amplified the emotion

Emotions §

1. Other-judging emotion - meant to deter from people acting unethically in public
2. Self-conscious emotions - prevent oneself to act immorally
3. Self-transcendent emotions - encourage people to act morally

Disgust - key moral emotion §

• Disgust - a sense of aversion to something perceived as dangerous because of its powers to contaminate, infect, or pollute by proximity, contact, or ingestion.
  • First emerged to prevent people eating bad food
  • Then extended to feelings of people
• Disgust causes harsher judgment

  More disgust sensitive => harsher moral judge

  • More reported disgust greater negativity towards social out-groups

Moral Foundations §

5 Cross-cultural principles that guides morality (importance vary slightly depends on the culture)

Harm/care §

• Perhaps the most important principle, one of the most uniformed principles
• The sense that one does not wish to hurt other people, want to care for them
  • “How much would I have to pay you to kick a do g in the head (hard)?”

Fairness/reciprocity §

• One of the most uniformed principles
• The sense of equal and fair between people
  • “How much would I have to pay you to make a secret agreement to only hire people of your own ethnicity?”

Ingroup/loyalty §

• Sense of loyalty to the belonged group
  • “How much would I have to pay you to bet on the Blue Jays to lose?”

Authority/respect §

• Sense of respect to authority figures.
  • “How much would I have to pay you to slap your father in the face (with permission)?”

Purity/sanctity §

• Sense of having things be pure, treat one’s own body as a temple
  • “How much would I have to pay you to undergo a blood transfusion with (safe) blood from a pedophile(恋童癖)”
  • Related to Disgust - key moral emotion and religious beliefs

Own Moral Behavior §

Moral Hypocrisy §

• Notion that one tend to judge other’s harsher than themselves

Study of Moral Hypocrisy

• Method
  • Participants were told that there are 2 tasks
    1. Fun and takes 10min
    2. Boring and takes 45min
  • Then they are given the choice or watch others choose which one to do
  • Then they are asked “How fairly did you/other act?”
• Result
  • Individual rated that they (choose the shorter one) is more fair than when others choose the shorter one

Moral Licensing §

• Notion that one tend to allow themselves to do something a little less moral when they have previously behaved morally