scholarly journals Social Threat Indirectly Increases Moral Condemnation via Thwarting Fundamental Social Needs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert K. Henderson ◽  
Simone Schnall
Keyword(s):  
Social Anxiety ◽  
Indirect Effect ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Social Threat ◽  
Social Standing ◽  
Positive Correlation ◽  
Moral Condemnation ◽  
Social Esteem

Individuals who experience threats to their social needs may attempt to avert further harm by condemning wrongdoers more severely. Three pre-registered studies tested whether threatened social esteem is associated with increased moral condemnation. In Study 1 (N = 381) participants played a game in which they were socially included or excluded and then evaluated the actions of moral wrongdoers. We observed an indirect effect: Exclusion increased social needs-threat, which in turn increased moral condemnation. Study 2 (N = 428) was a direct replication, and also showed this indirect effect. Both studies demonstrated the effect across five moral foundations, which was most pronounced for harm violations. Study 3 (N= 102) examined dispositional concerns about social needs threat, namely social anxiety, and showed a positive correlation between this trait and moral judgments. Overall, results suggest threatened social standing is linked to moral condemnation, presumably because moral wrongdoers pose a further threat when one’s ability to cope is already compromised.

scholarly journals Social threat indirectly increases moral condemnation via thwarting fundamental social needs

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert K. Henderson ◽  
Simone Schnall
Keyword(s):  
Social Anxiety ◽  
Indirect Effect ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Social Threat ◽  
Social Standing ◽  
Positive Correlation ◽  
Moral Condemnation ◽  
Social Esteem

AbstractIndividuals who experience threats to their social needs may attempt to avert further harm by condemning wrongdoers more severely. Three pre-registered studies tested whether threatened social esteem is associated with increased moral condemnation. In Study 1 (N = 381) participants played a game in which they were socially included or excluded and then evaluated the actions of moral wrongdoers. We observed an indirect effect: Exclusion increased social needs-threat, which in turn increased moral condemnation. Study 2 (N = 428) was a direct replication, and also showed this indirect effect. Both studies demonstrated the effect across five moral foundations, and was most pronounced for harm violations. Study 3 (N = 102) examined dispositional concerns about social needs threat, namely social anxiety, and showed a positive correlation between this trait and moral judgments. Overall, results suggest threatened social standing is linked to moral condemnation, presumably because moral wrongdoers pose a further threat when one’s ability to cope is already compromised.

scholarly journals Disgust sensitivity is primarily associated with purity-based moral judgments

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fieke Maria Antoinet Wagemans ◽  
Mark John Brandt ◽  
Marcel Zeelenberg
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Personality Characteristics ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Disgust Sensitivity ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Total N ◽  
Moral Domain ◽  
Moral Domains ◽  
Moral Condemnation

Individual differences in disgust sensitivity are associated with a range of judgments and attitudes related to the moral domain. Some perspectives suggest that the association between disgust sensitivity and moral judgments will be equally strong across all moral domains (purity, authority, loyalty, care, fairness, and liberty). Other perspectives predict that disgust sensitivity is primarily associated with judgments of specific moral domains (e.g., primarily purity). However, no study has systematically tested if disgust sensitivity is associated with moral judgments of the purity domain specifically, more generally to moral judgments of the binding moral domains, or to moral judgments of all of the moral domains equally. Across five studies (total N = 1104), we find consistent evidence for the notion that disgust sensitivity relates more strongly to moral condemnation of purity-based transgression (meta-analytic r = .40) than to moral condemnation of transgressions of any of the other domains (range meta-analytic r’s: .07 ̶ .27). Our findings are in line with predictions from Moral Foundations Theory, which predicts that personality characteristics like disgust sensitivity make people more sensitive to a certain set of moral issues.

Moral Judgments of COVID-19 Social Distancing Violations: The Roles of Perceived Harm and Impurity

2021 ◽  
pp. 014616722110254
Author(s):  
Daniel L. Rosenfeld ◽  
A. Janet Tomiyama
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Total N ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Competing Hypotheses ◽  
Moral Condemnation ◽  
Perceived Harm

Can perceptions of impurity uniquely explain moral judgment? Or is moral judgment reducible to perceptions of harm? Whereas some perspectives posit that purity violations may drive moral judgment distinctly from harm violations, other perspectives contend that perceived harm is an essential precursor of moral condemnation. We tested these competing hypotheses through five preregistered experiments (total N = 2,944) investigating U.S. adults’ perceptions of social distancing violations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Perceived harm was more strongly related to moral judgment than was perceived impurity. Nevertheless, over and above perceived harm, perceived impurity reliably explained unique variance in moral judgment. Effects of perceived harm and impurity were significant among both liberal and conservative participants but were larger among liberals. Results suggest that appraisals of both harm and impurity provide valuable insights into moral cognition. We discuss implications of these findings for dyadic morality, moral foundations, act versus character judgments, and political ideology.

Validation of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire with three Chinese ethnic groups

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (8) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Du
Keyword(s):  
Gender Difference ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Influential Factor ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory

Moral foundations theory is claimed to be universally applicable and is classified into 5 foundations of morality: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, respect/subversion, and purity/degradation. This theory has not been tested in the Eastern cultural context. Therefore, in this study I addressed this lack in the context of China, where there are people of a number of different ethnicities. I adopted the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, which was completed by 761 Chinese of Han, Uygur, and Tibetan ethnicity. The results show that there was no gender difference in morality foundation scores, but the differences among ethnic groups were significant: Tibetans scored lower than did Han and Uygur in care and fairness, and Uygur scored higher than Han and Tibetans did in loyalty, respect, and purity. The interactions between gender and ethnic group were significant for care, fairness, and respect. These findings suggest that moral foundations theory is applicable to China, that the Moral Foundations Questionnaire can also be partially applied to Chinese, and that ethnicity is an influential factor when people make moral judgments.

scholarly journals How Professionals Construct Moral Authority: Expanding Boundaries of Expert Authority in Stem Cell Science

2021 ◽  
pp. 000183922110114
Author(s):  
Joelle Evans
Keyword(s):  
Professional Community ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Pluralism ◽  
Technical Expertise ◽  
Abstract Knowledge ◽  
Stem Cell Science ◽  
Definition Of

Negotiations over professional boundaries are often contests about controlling technical expertise and authority. Less is known about the role of moral judgments in such contests because well-trained professionals often silence their moral commitments or engage moral debates outside the boundaries of their profession. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a science laboratory at the forefront of moral controversy, this article shows how professionals manage moral challenges by reconfiguring their conventional domain of expert authority to include moral as well as technical expertise. Scientists drew on their plural moral views to develop, apply, and mobilize abstract knowledge about morals as resources to claim authority in debates over the moral definition of their work. Collective learning and collaboration ensured the cohesion of the professional community throughout the process of developing authority despite continued moral pluralism. By unpacking one mechanism for the pursuit of moral authority, the study elaborates our understanding of the moral foundations of professionalism and of the emergence of morally complex work activities.

scholarly journals I think, therefore I forgive: The role of reasoning in forgiving accidental harms

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Indrajeet Patil ◽  
Bastien Trémolière
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Style ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Reasoning Ability ◽  
Total N ◽  
Moral Condemnation

People experience a strong conflict while condemning someone who brought about an accidental harm, her innocent intention exonerating her, but the harmful outcome incriminating her. In the present research (total N = 4879), we explore how reasoning ability and cognitive style relate to how people choose to resolve this conflict and judge the accidental harms. A first set of studies (1a-c) showed that individual differences in cognitive style predicted severity of judgments in fictitious accidental harms scenarios, with more able (or willing) reasoners being less harsh in their judgments. A second set of studies (2a-c) relied on experimental manipulations of cognitive load (Dot matrix, Time pressure, Mortality Salience manipulations), aiming to tax available cognitive resources to participants while evaluating third-party harmful behaviors. These manipulations, however, failed to modulate people’s moral judgments for accidental harms. We discuss the importance of individual differences in reasoning ability in the assessment of accidental harms, and we also propose potential explanations for the failure of our experimental manipulations to affect severity of moral condemnation.

scholarly journals Difficulty Disengaging Attention from Social Threat in Social Anxiety

2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia D. Buckner ◽  
Jon K. Maner ◽  
Norman B. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Social Anxiety ◽  
Social Threat

SOCIAL ANXIETY, SELF-FOCUSED ATTENTION, AND THE DISCRIMINATION OF NEGATIVE, NEUTRAL AND POSITIVE AUDIENCE MEMBERS BY THEIR NON-VERBAL BEHAVIOURS

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Perowne ◽  
Warren Mansell
Keyword(s):  
Social Anxiety ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Social Threat ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Socially Anxious ◽  
Anxiety Group ◽  
Threat Cues ◽  
High Social Anxiety

Recent research indicates the apparent paradox that social anxiety may be associated with both self-focused attention and selective attention to external social threat cues. A naturalistic paradigm was designed to explore both processes. High and low socially anxious individuals were asked to make a speech to a monitor displaying six people whom they believed to be watching them live. Two audience members exhibited only positive behaviours, two only neutral ones and two only negative behaviours. In contrast to the low social anxiety group who selectively discriminated positive audience members, the high social anxiety group selectively discriminated the negative individuals, yet they were no more accurate at discriminating the negative behaviours the audience members had performed and they reported more self-focused attention than the low social anxiety group. The effects remained while covarying for differences in dysphoria. The results indicate that socially anxious individuals base their judgements of being disapproved by others on limited processing of their social environment.

scholarly journals Edgcumbe. 2019 - The relationship between cognitive reflection and morality judgments are mediated by thinking dispositions.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Edgcumbe
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Cognitive Reflection Test ◽  
Thinking Dispositions ◽  
Intuitive Thinking ◽  
Cognitive Reflection ◽  
Experiential Thinking ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract:Performance on Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is thought to predict moral judgments concerning the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ). This relationship is hypothesised to be mediated by the tendency toward thinking dispositions such as actively open-minded thinking (AOT), rational (REI-R) and experiential thinking (REI-E), and religiosity. The relationship between cognitive reflection, intuitive thinking and moral judgments with thinking dispositions are examined. As the MFQ measures five types of moral judgments which include ‘individualising values’ – harm and fairness, and ‘binding values’ - loyalty, authority and purity it was hypothesised that performance on these moral foundations would be influenced by thinking dispositions and cognitive reflection. Results indicate that the relationship between cognitive reflection and moral judgments were mediated differently by thinking dispositions. Religious participants and intuitive thinkers alike scored highly on binding moral values. Analytic thinkers and non-religious participants scored highly on individualising moral values. The data is consistent with religiosity and intuition being inherently linked and suggests that moral values are influenced by individual differences in thinking dispositions and cognitive style.

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