The Moral Psychology of Raceless, Genderless Strangers

Abstract

Moral psychology uses tightly controlled scenarios in which the identities of the characters are either unspecified or vague. Studies with raceless, genderless strangers help to highlight the important structural elements of moral acts (e.g., intention, causation, harm) but may not generalize to real-world judgments. As researchers have long shown, social judgments hinge on the identities (e.g., race, gender, age, religion, group affiliation) of both target and perceiver. Asking whether people generally condemn “shooting someone” is very different from asking whether liberals as opposed to conservatives condemn “a White police officer shooting a Black suspect.” We argue for the importance of incorporating identity into moral psychology. We briefly outline the central role of identity in social judgments before reviewing current theories in moral psychology. We then advocate an expanded person-centered morality—synthesizing moral psychology with social cognition—to better capture everyday moral judgments.

Inequality in Researchers’ Minds: Four Guiding Questions for Studying Subjective Perceptions of Economic Inequality

“…However, in the real world, economic inequality intersects with factors like age, gender, and race (e.g., Chetty et al, 2020a;Chetty et al, 2020b;Chetty & Hendren, 2018), and asking people to estimate general levels of inequality may obscure important differences in their perceptions of it. Notably, even if not explicitly asked to do so, people are likely to report their perceptions of inequality that implicitly rely on such subgroups (e.g., Hester & Gray, 2020;Ito & Urland, 2005;Martin & Slepian, 2020). For instance, to the extent that Americans often treat White men as the default (Zarate & Smith, 1990)-particularly in organizational contexts (e.g., Eaton et al, 2020;Cheryan & Markus, 2020;Grossman & Porche, 2014;Wright, Eaton, & Skagerberg, 2015)-studying perceptions of inequality without clearly defining the reference group may lead people to report their perceptions of inequality among salient White men.…”

Moral Judgment as Categorization (MJAC)

“…viewing moral categorization as occurring as part of goal-directed activity (e.g., categorization of actor versus action discussed above). Incorporating both of these considerations into a program of research inevitably leads to attempts to make the study of moral judgment reflective of real-world moral decision making (Bauman et al, 2014;Bostyn et al, 2018;Gilligan, 1977Gilligan, , 1993Hester & Gray, 2020;Hofmann et al, 2014;Schein, 2020;Watkins, 2020).…”

“…It is worth noting that this sensitivity to context of moral judgment implies that the importance of understanding moral judgments in more real life contexts rather than through the study of abstract decontextualized dilemmas has been well documented (e.g., Bauman et al, 2014;Bostyn et al, 2018;Gilligan, 1977Gilligan, , 1993Hester & Gray, 2020;Hofmann et al, 2014;Schein, 2020;Watkins, 2020). By focusing specifically on context sensitive categorizations occurring as part of goal-directed activity MJAC offers a framework for attempting to make the study of moral judgments more reflective of the making of moral judgments in everyday life.…”

How social relationships shape moral wrongness judgments

“…Moral psychology has been dominated by studies of judgments and behaviors concerning "raceless genderless strangers" (1) who stand in no particular relationship with one another. 1 Studies in this vein commonly ask participants to make decisions that impact anonymous others (2)(3)(4) or to judge the moral acceptability of hypothetical actions taken by thinlydescribed moral agents, as in so-called trolley problems (sacrificial dilemmas in which participants must judge the permissibility of killing one person in order to save a greater number) (5)(6)(7)(8). Of course, people do sometimes encounter strangers in need of help --albeit not usually in life-or-death situations.…”