Preferences for moral vs. immoral traits in others are conditional

Melnikoff, David; Bailey, April H.

doi:10.1073/pnas.1714945115

Cited by 99 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…[We do not wish to argue that book-smart is a universally more positive trait than street-smart. In fact, recent work has provided evidence that even traits with clear moral implications, such as merciful, honest, and selfish, are subject to contextually dependent implicit evaluations (53). As such, we believe that it is an intriguing empirical question whether a trait that becomes contextually positive given some current goal, also becomes temporarily more closely associated with the (high-status) ingroup.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 84%

The relationship between implicit intergroup attitudes and beliefs

Kurdi

Mann

Charlesworth

et al. 2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Intergroup attitudes (evaluations) are generalized valence attributions to social groups (e.g., white-bad/Asian-good), whereas intergroup beliefs (stereotypes) are specific trait attributions to social groups (e.g., white-dumb/Asian-smart). When explicit (selfreport) measures are used, attitudes toward and beliefs about the same social group are often related to each other but can also be dissociated. The present work used three approaches (correlational, experimental, and archival) to conduct a systematic investigation of the relationship between implicit (indirectly revealed) intergroup attitudes and beliefs. In study 1 (n = 1,942), we found significant correlations and, in some cases, evidence for redundancy, between Implicit Association Tests (IATs) measuring attitudes toward and beliefs about the same social groups (mean r = 0.31, 95% confidence interval: [0.24; 0.39]). In study 2 (n = 383), manipulating attitudes via evaluative conditioning produced parallel changes in belief IATs, demonstrating that implicit attitudes can causally drive implicit beliefs when information about the specific semantic trait is absent. In study 3, we used word embeddings derived from a large corpus of online text to show that the relative distance of 22 social groups from positive vs. negative words (reflecting generalized attitudes) was highly correlated with their distance from warm vs. cold, and even competent vs. incompetent, words (reflecting specific beliefs). Overall, these studies provide convergent evidence for tight connections between implicit attitudes and beliefs, suggesting that the dissociations observed using explicit measures may arise uniquely from deliberate judgment processes. attitudes | Implicit Association Test | implicit social cognition | stereotypes | word embeddings

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 84%

The relationship between implicit intergroup attitudes and beliefs

Kurdi

Mann

Charlesworth

et al. 2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Most frequent words (top 10%) when describing rational and reasonable persons. Appendix References (45)(46)(47)(48)(49)(50)(51)(52)(53)…”

Section: Supplementary Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Folk standards of sound judgment: Rationality Versus Reasonableness

et al. 2020

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Normative theories of judgment either focus on rationality (decontextualized preference maximization) or reasonableness (pragmatic balance of preferences and socially conscious norms). Despite centuries of work on these concepts, a critical question appears overlooked: How do people’s intuitions and behavior align with the concepts of rationality from game theory and reasonableness from legal scholarship? We show that laypeople view rationality as abstract and preference maximizing, simultaneously viewing reasonableness as sensitive to social context, as evidenced in spontaneous descriptions, social perceptions, and linguistic analyses of cultural products (news, soap operas, legal opinions, and Google books). Further, experiments among North Americans and Pakistani bankers, street merchants, and samples engaging in exchange (versus market) economy show that rationality and reasonableness lead people to different conclusions about what constitutes good judgment in Dictator Games, Commons Dilemma, and Prisoner’s Dilemma: Lay rationality is reductionist and instrumental, whereas reasonableness integrates preferences with particulars and moral concerns.

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“…Even when the parameters of a task are held constant, there are some individuals who resolutely adhere to reciprocal trust norms and others who deviate from this norm (Baumgartner et al, 2009; Cesarini et al, 2008). There are other cases in which individuals might doggedly reciprocate trust in one situation, but swiftly forgo reciprocal behavior when the situation changes (Melnikoff & Bailey, 2018). For example, if a Trustee knows an Investor made a highly risky decision to trust, the Trustee will reciprocate with more money, illustrating the exquisite sensitivity people have to normative signals (Van Den Bos, van Dijk, Westenberg, Rombouts, & Crone, 2009).…”

Section: The Norms That Govern Moral Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Norms and the Flexibility of Moral Action

FeldmanHall

Son

Heffner

2018

Personality Neuroscience

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A complex web of social and moral norms governs many everyday human behaviors, acting as the glue for social harmony. The existence of moral norms helps elucidate the psychological motivations underlying a wide variety of seemingly puzzling behavior, including why humans help or trust total strangers. In this review, we examine four widespread moral norms: Fairness, altruism, trust, and cooperation, and consider how a single social instrument—reciprocity—underpins compliance to these norms. Using a game theoretic framework, we examine how both context and emotions moderate moral standards, and by extension, moral behavior. We additionally discuss how a mechanism of reciprocity facilitates the adherence to, and enforcement of, these moral norms through a core network of brain regions involved in processing reward. In contrast, violating this set of moral norms elicits neural activation in regions involved in resolving decision conflict and exerting cognitive control. Finally, we review how a reinforcement mechanism likely governs learning about morally normative behavior. Together, this review aims to explain how moral norms are deployed in ways that facilitate flexible moral choices.

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Preferences for moral vs. immoral traits in others are conditional

Cited by 99 publications

References 41 publications

The relationship between implicit intergroup attitudes and beliefs

The relationship between implicit intergroup attitudes and beliefs

Folk standards of sound judgment: Rationality Versus Reasonableness

Norms and the Flexibility of Moral Action

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