Deconstructing moral character judgments

Hartman, Rachel; Blakey, Will

doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.07.008

Cited by 22 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…Exposure to non-Hadza cultures could also moderate the moral character concept among Hadza. In Western populations, intent to do harm or to commit a moral violation is central to moral character judgments 55 , 56 . Intention to do wrong suggests a desire to commit the act, which is used to infer the potential to commit moral violations again in the future.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence against the “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype in Hadza hunter gatherers

Workman

Smith

Apicella

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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People have an “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype whereby they make negative inferences about the moral character of people with craniofacial anomalies like scars. This stereotype is hypothesized to be a byproduct of adaptations for avoiding pathogens. However, evidence for the anomalous-is-bad stereotype comes from studies of European and North American populations; the byproduct hypothesis would predict universality of the stereotype. We presented 123 Hadza across ten camps pairs of morphed Hadza faces—each with one face altered to include a scar—and asked who they expected to be more moral and a better forager. Hadza with minimal exposure to other cultures chose at chance for both questions. Hadza with greater exposure to other cultures, however, expected the scarred face to be less moral and a better forager. These results suggest the anomalous-is-bad stereotype may be culturally shared or learned erroneously through associations with population-level differences, providing evidence against a universal pathogen avoidance byproduct hypothesis.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence against the “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype in Hadza hunter gatherers

Workman

Smith

Apicella

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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“…In examining how observers predict the trajectory of an agent's future character and behavior, we build on a growing literature in moral psychology focused on the evaluation of moral character (for reviews, see Hartman et al, 2022;Helzer & Critcher, 2018;Pizarro & Tannenbaum, 2011;Uhlmann et al, 2015). Psychological research has demonstrated that people make judgments not just of particular acts (e.g., "is this a moral action?")…”

Section: Predicting Moral Character and Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Highway to Hell: Slippery Slope Perceptions in Judgments of Moral Character

Anderson

Ruisch

Pizarro

2023

Pers Soc Psychol Bull

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Across four studies, we test the hypothesis that people exhibit “slippery slope” thinking in their judgments of moral character—that is, do observers judge that a person who behaves immorally will become increasingly immoral over time? In Study 1, we find that a person who commits an immoral act is judged as more likely to behave immorally and as having a worse character in the future than in the past. In Study 2, we find that it is the commission of an immoral act specifically—rather than merely attempting an immoral act—that drives this slippery slope effect. In Study 3, we demonstrate that observers judge the moral agent as more likely to commit acts of greater severity further in time after the initial immoral act. In Study 4, we find that this effect is driven by an anticipated corrupting of moral character, related to perceptions of the agent’s guilt.

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“…First, we more explicitly distinguish the structure of judgments about moral character and judgments about cooperative acts. Although these two are obviously related, as people use behaviors to infer moral character, person-level moral character judgments seem most consequential for predicting people’s future behavior (Hartman et al, 2022; Pizarro & Tannenbaum, 2012).…”

Section: Character Complexity and The Challenge Of Choosing Cooperati...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Generalized morality culturally evolves as an adaptive heuristic in large social networks.

Jackson,

Halberstadt,

Takezawa

et al. 2023

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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Why do people assume that a generous person should also be honest? Why do we even use words like “moral” and “immoral”? We explore these questions with a new model of how people perceive moral character. We propose that people vary in the extent to which they perceive moral character as “localized” (varying along many contextually embedded dimensions) versus “generalized” (varying along a single dimension from morally bad to morally good). This variation might be partly the product of cultural evolutionary adaptations to different kinds of social networks. As networks grow larger, perceptions of generalized morality are increasingly valuable for predicting cooperation during partner selection, especially in novel contexts. Our studies show that social network size correlates with perceptions of generalized morality in United States and international samples (Study 1) and that East African hunter–gatherers with greater exposure outside their local region perceive morality as more generalized compared to those who have remained in their local region (Study 2). We support the adaptive value of generalized morality in large and unfamiliar social networks with an agent-based model (Study 3), and in experiments where we manipulate partner unfamiliarity (Study 4). Our final study shows that perceptions of morality have become more generalized over the last 200 years of English-language history, which suggests that it may be coevolving with rising social complexity and anonymity in the English-speaking world (Study 5). We discuss the implications of this theory for the cultural evolution of political systems, religion, and taxonomical theories of morality.

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Deconstructing moral character judgments

Cited by 22 publications

References 61 publications

Evidence against the “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype in Hadza hunter gatherers

Evidence against the “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype in Hadza hunter gatherers

On the Highway to Hell: Slippery Slope Perceptions in Judgments of Moral Character

Generalized morality culturally evolves as an adaptive heuristic in large social networks.

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