Punish or Protect? How Close Relationships Shape Responses to Moral Violations

Abstract

People have fundamental tendencies to punish immoral actors and treat close others altruistically. What happens when these tendencies collide—do people punish or protect close others who behave immorally? Across 10 studies ( N = 2,847), we show that people consistently anticipate protecting close others who commit moral infractions, particularly highly severe acts of theft and sexual harassment. This tendency emerged regardless of gender, political orientation, moral foundations, and disgust sensitivity and was driven by concerns about self-interest, loyalty, and harm. We further find that people justify this tendency by planning to discipline close others on their own. We also identify a psychological mechanism that mitigates the tendency to protect close others who have committed severe (but not mild) moral infractions: self-distancing. These findings highlight the role that relational closeness plays in shaping people’s responses to moral violations, underscoring the need to consider relational closeness in future moral psychology work.

Moral Judgment as Categorization (MJAC)

“…3 Though see Forbes (2018), Bollich et al (2016), Hofmann et al (2014), Lee and Holyoak (2020), and Weidman et al (2020). 4 Relatedly, for favourable judgements, we predict the opposite effect.…”

“…Hester & Gray, 2020; see also Feltz & May, 2017). We predict that people will be more lenient in their judgments of (b) than of (a) as people appear to be more lenient in their judgments of people they are close to, versus strangers (Forbes, 2018;Hofmann et al, 2014;Lee & Holyoak, 2020;Weidman et al, 2020).…”

“…In making the action the target of the categorization rather than the actor, people can reduce the degree to which they view their close others negatively. However, this strategy is implemented in addition to making judgments that are more lenient (Forbes, 2018;Hofmann et al, 2014;Lee & Holyoak, 2020;Weidman et al, 2020). Making more lenient judgments in relation to specific transgressions based on the actor introduces context specific inconsistency in relation to the categorization of that transgression.…”

Enduring Positivity: Children Of Incarcerated Parents Report More Positive Than Negative Emotions When Thinking about Close Others

“…Past work suggests that adults' positivity toward close others may supersede the negativity typically associated with perceived transgression. Adults anticipate protecting close others who commit moral transgressions (Weidman, Sowden, Berg, & Kross, 2019) and rate behaviors as less unethical when the target is a relative versus a stranger (Lee & Holyoak, 2018). If children report more positive than negative views of their incarcerated parents, this would suggest that adults' propensity to show positivity toward close others who have transgressed may not depend on extensive social experience.…”

How social relationships shape moral wrongness judgments

“…A number of theorists have highlighted relational context as likely to be important for understanding moral judgment and behavior (9,11,(14)(15)(16)(17). In line with these developments, there is now a small but growing empirical literature which explores how moral judgments vary across different types of social relationships (18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31). What is missing, however, is a comprehensive, theoretically coherent, data-driven account of how, when, and why social relationships shape particular moral judgments (13).…”