Why Do We Hate Hypocrites? Evidence for a Theory of False Signaling

Jordan, Jillian J.; Sommers, Roseanna; Bloom, Paul; Rand, David G.

doi:10.1177/0956797616685771

Cited by 164 publications

(169 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…It has been proposed that restoring justice is another route through which people can maintain just world beliefs (25,26). And we have argued it is typically a more adaptive response to wrongdoing, because people frequently face incentives for justice-restorative action (19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35). Our experiments are consistent with the hypothesis that in order to adaptively motivate such action, people see victims as morally good.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

“…A large literature has investigated mechanisms that can give rise to punishment. Punishment serves to deter wrongdoing, and thus can be supported by processes like reciprocity (27), reputation (28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34), institutions (35,36), and cultural group selection (37)(38)(39)(40). For example, in the domain of reputation, punishment can serve as a signal of moral character (27-30, 34, 41), or be supported by social norms (40).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Virtuous Victims

Jordan¹,

Kouchaki²

2020

Preprint

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Humans ubiquitously encounter narratives about immoral acts and their victims. Here, we demonstrate that these narratives can influence perceptions of victims' moral character. Specifically, across a wide range of contexts, victims are seen as more moral than non-victims who have behaved identically. Using 13 experiments (total n = 8,358), we explore this Virtuous Victim effect. We show that it is specific to victims of immorality (i.e., it does not extend equally to victims of accidental misfortune) and to moral virtue (i.e., it does not extend equally to positive nonmoral traits). We also show that the Virtuous Victim effect can occur online and in the lab, when subjects have other morally relevant information about the victim, when subjects have a direct opportunity to condemn the perpetrator, and in the context of both third-and first-person victim narratives. Finally, we provide support for the Justice Restoration Hypothesis, which posits that people see victims as moral in order to motivate adaptive justice-restorative action (i.e., punishment of perpetrators and helping of victims). We show that people see victims as having elevated moral character, but do not expect them to behave more morally or less immorally-a pattern that is consistent with the Justice Restoration Hypothesis, but not readily explained by alternative explanations for the Virtuous Victim effect. And we provide both correlational and causal evidence for a key prediction of the Justice Restoration Hypothesis: when people do not perceive incentives to help victims and punish perpetrators, the Virtuous Victim effect disappears. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 iPad theft Idea theft Corrupt doctor Verbal attack Sexual pushiness Moral character Neutral Victim 6Our first vignette described the theft of an iPad. In both conditions, subjects learned that the target (e.g., "Sarah") was a college student, and had classmates over to study for an exam. While they were studying, one classmate (e.g, "Gabrielle") looked something up on Sarah's iPad. In the neutral condition, the vignette then ended; thus, Sarah was a neutral target. In the victim condition, however, the vignette continued to explain that Gabrielle subsequently broke in and stole Sarah's iPad; thus, Sarah was a victim. Subjects then rated Sarah's moral character.We applied our basic design to our iPad vignette in Experiments 1-5. For this and all analyses in this section, we compare the neutral and victim conditions of our basic design experiments. (Some of these experiments also included other conditions, not included in these analyses). Additionally, for this and all aggregate analyses, we include experiment dummies in our statistical model. We find that subjects who read that Sarah's iPad was stolen perceived Sarah as having elevated moral character. Specifically, as compared to neutral targets, victims were seen as more moral, b = .52, t = 7.96, p < .001, and trustworthy, b = .50, t = 7.26, p < .001, n = 1,917.Our second vignette described the theft of an idea. In both conditions, the target worke...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtuous Victims

Jordan¹,

Kouchaki²

2020

Preprint

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“…Moral hypocrisy occurs when people hold themselves to different moral standards than others, and it likely reflects a motivation to appear moral while behaving selfishly (Batson et al, 1997;Gino et al, 2016;Graham et al, 2015;Jordan, Sommers, Bloom, & Rand, 2017;Sharma et al, 2014;Szabados & Soifer, 2004). Researchers have operationalized hypocrisy in two complementary ways.…”

Section: Moral Hypocrisy: Decisions ∩ Judgmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling Morality in 3‐D: Decision‐Making, Judgment, and Inference

Siegel

Crockett

2018

Topics in Cognitive Science

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Humans face a fundamental challenge of how to balance selfish interests against moral considerations. Such trade‐offs are implicit in moral decisions about what to do; judgments of whether an action is morally right or wrong; and inferences about the moral character of others. To date, these three dimensions of moral cognition–decision‐making, judgment, and inference–have been studied largely independently, using very different experimental paradigms. However, important aspects of moral cognition occur at the intersection of multiple dimensions; for instance, moral hypocrisy can be conceived as a disconnect between moral decisions and moral judgments. Here we describe the advantages of investigating these three dimensions of moral cognition within a single computational framework. A core component of this framework is harm aversion, a moral sentiment defined as a distaste for harming others. The framework integrates economic utility models of harm aversion with Bayesian reinforcement learning models describing beliefs about others’ harm aversion. We show how this framework can provide novel insights into the mechanisms of moral decision‐making, judgment, and inference.

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“…Previous research consistently shows that hypocritical political behavior has very negative consequences and can affect individuals' attitudes toward political candidates (Bhatti et al, 2013;Jordan et al, 2017;McDermott et al, 2015). Also, political misconduct canindependently of particular cognitive effectsresult in negative emotional responses, i.e., anger (Kepplinger et al, 2012).…”

Section: The Negative Consequences Of Hypocrisy In Political Scandalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furia (2009) defined hypocrisy as "an incongruity between an individual's personal behaviors and her publicly expressed beliefs" (p. 115). That is, politicians frequently impose strict moral standards on other people or politicians but practice less strict moral behavior themselves (Jordan, Sommers, Bloom, & Rand, 2017). A candidate's political behavior of condemning immoral behavior that he or she in fact engages in, oftentimes serves as a starting point for a political scandal (Bhatti, Hansen, & Olsen, 2013;McDermott et al, 2015).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Not practicing what they preached! Exploring negative spillover effects of news about ex-politicians’ hypocrisy on party attitudes, voting intentions, and political trust

Sikorski

Herbst

2019

Media Psychology

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Political hypocrisya frequent feature of contemporary politicsoftentimes occurs when politicians resign from office and then engage in behavior that is in fundamental opposition to the standpoints they originally campaigned for as incumbents. Previous research has neglected to examine negative spillover effects of news about ex-politicians' hypocritical behavior. Drawing from the inclusion/exclusion model and the feelingsas-information model, we conducted two experiments in two different countries and used different stimuli to increase external validity. Results suggest a dual process account of scandal spillover effects (an attitudinal and emotional mechanism) revealing that hypocrisy negatively affected both attitudes and emotions toward an ex-politician. Mediation analysis further showed that evaluations in turn negatively affected attitudes and voting intentions for the party the hypocritical politician used to belong to (attitudinal spillover process). No effects on general political trust emerged. In contrast, negative emotions had no effect on party attitudes and voting intentions but decreased political trust toward politicians in general (emotional spillover process). In line with the inclusion/exclusion model, the results help to explain inconsistent findings in previous studies that did not account for the suggested dual process account of spillover effects and underline the eroding effects of hypocrisy.

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Why Do We Hate Hypocrites? Evidence for a Theory of False Signaling

Cited by 164 publications

References 33 publications

Virtuous Victims

Virtuous Victims

Modeling Morality in 3‐D: Decision‐Making, Judgment, and Inference

Not practicing what they preached! Exploring negative spillover effects of news about ex-politicians’ hypocrisy on party attitudes, voting intentions, and political trust

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