The Harm-Made Mind

Abstract

People often think that something must have a mind to be part of a moral interaction. However, the present research suggests that minds do not create morality but that morality creates minds. In four experiments, we found that observing intentional harm to an unconscious entity--a vegetative patient, a robot, or a corpse--leads to augmented attribution of mind to that entity. A fifth experiment reconciled these results with extant research on dehumanization by showing that observing the victimization of conscious entities leads to reduced attribution of mind to those entities. Taken together, these experiments suggest that the effects of victimization vary according to victims' preexisting mental status and that people often make an intuitive cognitive error when unconscious entities are placed in harm's way. People assume that if apparent moral harm occurs, then there must be someone there to experience that harm-a harm-made mind. These findings have implications for political policies concerning right-to-life issues.

We perceive a mind in a robot when we help it

“…The present study extended the findings of Ward et al [5] in three ways. First, although the dyadic moral template is assumed to consist of two parties—an agent and a patient—regardless of whether the agent takes a morally good or bad action, Ward and colleagues only investigated the effect of an immoral act (i.e., harming the robot).…”

“…Mind perception can be increased when the entity is involved in moral acts, even if the entity is usually thought to be mindless [5]. Ward and colleagues conducted vignette experiments and showed that participants tended to attribute more mind, specifically, the capacity to experience pain, to a robot when it is harmed than when treated appropriately.…”

“…People seem to more likely to take affiliative behaviors than harming behaviors toward robots in mundane situations, since they are generally produced to help people in their daily activities. Paralleling the assumption by Ward et al [5], that pain is the primary mental capacity linked to a harmful act, we focused on the capacity to experience pleasure as the most critical capacity that people attribute to a robot when they observe a robot receiving care.…”

The myth of harmless wrongs in moral cognition: Automatic dyadic completion from sin to suffering.

“…People can fail to see harm in cases of genocide (Castano & Giner-Sorolla, 2006;Jahoda, 1998), child slavery (Gomey, 2011), or torture (Gray & Wegner, 2010b;Greenberg & Dratel, 2005) simply by stripping others of mind (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 1996;Haslam, 2006). Conversely, people can see harm in appar ently victimless acts by ascribing more mind to animals (Bastian, Costello, Loughnan, & Hodson, 2012), fetuses (Gray, Gray, & Wegner, 2007), nature (Tam, Lee, & Chao, 2013), vegetative patients (Gray, Knickman, & Wegner, 2011), and robots (Gray & Wegner, 2012;Ward, Olsen, & Wegner, 2013). Motivation can also alter perceived harm, as people strip minds from those they hate (Castano & Giner-Sorolla, 2006;Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, & Jackson, 2008;Haslam, 2006;Osofsky, Bandura, & Zimbardo, 2005) and confer them on those they love (Gardner & Knowles, 2008;Waytz, Gray, Epley, & Wegner, 2010).…”

“…People see victims or suffering in proportion to the severity or intentionality of various moral transgressions (DeScioli, 2008;DeScioli, Gilbert, & Kurzban, 2012;Gutierrez & Giner-Sorolla, 2007;Haidt & Hersh, 2001;Ward et al, 2013). For example, intentional harms are seen to cause more harm (Gray & Wegner, 2008) and to be overall worse than unintentional harms (Ames & Fiske, 2013).…”