Act versus Impact: Conservatives and liberals exhibit different structural emphases in moral judgment

Abstract

Conservatives and liberals disagree sharply on matters of morality and public policy. We propose a novel account of the psychological basis of these differences. Specifically, we find that conservatives tend to emphasize the intrinsic value of actions during moral judgment, in part by mentally simulating themselves performing those actions, while liberals instead emphasize the value of the expected outcomes of the action. We then demonstrate that a structural emphasis on actions is linked to the condemnation of victimless crimes, a distinctive feature of conservative morality. Next, we find that the conservative and liberal structural approaches to moral judgment are associated with their corresponding patterns of reliance on distinct moral foundations. In addition, the structural approach uniquely predicts that conservatives will be more opposed to harm in circumstances like the wellknown trolley problem, a result which we replicate. Finally, we show that the structural approaches of conservatives and liberals are partly linked to underlying cognitive styles (intuitive versus deliberative). Collectively, these findings forge a link between two important yet previously independent lines of research in political psychology: cognitive style and moral foundations theory.

Trait psychopathy and utilitarian moral judgement: The mediating role of action aversion

“…Additionally, people are consciously aware of this emotional arousal when they contemplate personal moral dilemmas and report being more aroused on self-report measures (Szekely & Miu, 2014). Although this evidence corroborates the role of reduced negative affect in utilitarian moral judgements, a more nuanced analysis is in order because negative affect can derive from two different psychological mechanisms, namely outcome and action aversion which respectively stem from victim and agent perspective-taking (Cushman, Gray, Gaffey, & Mendes, 2012;Hannikainen, Miller, & Cushman, 2015;Miller, Hannikainen, & Cushman, 2014). Therefore, it needs to be determined which of these sources are responsible for reduced negative affect that underlies increased utilitarian tendencies.…”

“…At first blush, it might seem surprising that outcome aversion did not predict utilitarian moral judgements on either impersonal or personal moral dilemma. But, as argued by others (Hannikainen et al, 2015;Miller et al, 2014) who have observed similar patterns of responses, this is probably due to the idiosyncratic nature of moral dilemmas where both action and omission produce bad outcomes. Since harmful outcome would materialise for either the distal (the five people that need to be saved) or the proximal (the one person that needs to be sacrificed) victim/s irrespective of the choice the agent makes, outcome aversion would not preferentially recommend either alternative.…”

“…An elevated level of action aversion on self-report measures also predicts a reduced tendency to endorse utilitarian moral judgements on both impersonal and personal moral dilemmas (Miller et al, 2014). Also, people who report themselves as more focused on actions than outcomes when deciding on moral appropriateness of harmful behaviour and who prefer taking perspective of the agent (over that of the victim) when judging third-party harmful behaviours condemn utilitarian course of action more (Hannikainen et al, 2015). Finally, people exhibit more autonomic arousal when they act to sacrifice one person for the greater good of saving five lives than when they omit to act and let the same outcome materialise (Navarrete, McDonald, Mott, & Asher, 2012).…”

“…Although it is not contentious that the source of this negative affect lies in intuitive human aversion to harming others in any way, shape, or form (Haidt & Joseph, 2004), the exploration of the psychological basis of this negative affect is a mystery that has only recently begun to unravel. This research shows that the two sources of negative affect that support harm aversion stem from different evaluative foci of perspective-taking in mental simulations of harmful situations (Hannikainen et al, 2015;Miller & Cushman, 2013): (1) Adopting the victim's psychological frame of reference elicits Mediation analysis was carried out using Preacher-Hayes bootstrapping method (Preacher & Hayes, 2004). Bias corrected and accelerated 95% CIs from 20,000 bootstrap samples are reported for specific indirect effects.…”

Is the moral domain unique? A social influence perspective for the study of moral cognition

“…If someone attempts to betray their in-group, but is unsuccessful in their act of betrayal, does that make the attempted betrayal any less immoral? There is some evidence to support the possibility that the action of betrayal is more relevant than the outcome of betrayal in moral judgments (Hannikainen, Miller, & Cushman, 2017), along with evidence that people have a strong "betrayal aversion" (Bohnet, Greig, Herrmann, & Zechhauser, 2008) that leads them to judge acts of betrayal more harshly than harmful acts with identical outcomes but no aspect of betrayal (Koehler & Gershoff, 2003). From this evidence, we can infer a tentative hypothesis: The level of experiential mind perception attributed to the victim of a loyalty violation is less relevant to judgments of wrongness than it is to judgments to wrongness in the harm and fairness domains (because these domains typically have clearer victims).…”