Moral Chivalry

Abstract

Moral perceptions of harm and fairness are instrumental in guiding how an individual navigates moral challenges. Classic research documents that the gender of a target can affect how people deploy these perceptions of harm and fairness. Across multiple studies, we explore the effect of an individual’s moral orientations (their considerations of harm and justice) and a target’s gender on altruistic behavior. Results reveal that a target’s gender can bias one’s readiness to engage in harmful actions and that a decider’s considerations of harm—but not fairness concerns—modulate costly altruism. Together, these data illustrate that moral choices are conditional on the social nature of the moral dyad: Even under the same moral constraints, a target’s gender and a decider’s gender can shift an individual’s choice to be more or less altruistic, suggesting that gender bias and harm considerations play a significant role in moral cognition.

Reactions to male‐favouring versus female‐favouring sex differences: A pre‐registered experiment and Southeast Asian replication

“…For example, people see aggression perpetrated against women as more serious than aggression perpetrated against men (Harris & Knight-Bohnhoff, 1996;Stewart-Williams, 2002); are more willing to give up potential participation money to prevent an electric shock being delivered to a woman (FeldmanHall et al, 2016); and in the classic hypothetical trolley dilemma, express greater willingness to push a man than a woman off a footbridge to stop an out-of-control train killing five people further along the track (FeldmanHall et al, 2016).…”

Neuroanatomical basis of concern-based altruism in virtual environment

“…Close to the end of the path (i.e., the exit of the building), participants unexpectedly encountered an injured male avatar (cf. FeldmanHall et al, 2016) previously seen 1 in the meeting room but now lying on the floor, trapped under a heavy cabinet and asking for help.…”

Gendered white lies: Women are given inflated performance feedback compared to men

“…One could still argue, however, that even in the absence of outgroup discomfort, people may still be concerned about the way others may perceive their actions towards a woman. If there is a social expectation of being nice to women (FeldmanHall et al, 2016;Viki, Abrams, & Hutchison, 2003), people may upwardly distort feedback to appear 'nice,' 'chivalrous,' or 'egalitarian.' But, again, according to social roles theory, this would be more likely a concern for men ( Rosell & Hartman, 2001), and in Study 2, both women and men showed the white lies bias effect.…”