What we would (but shouldn't) do for those we love: Universalism versus partiality in responding to others' moral transgressions

Soter, Laura; Berg, Martha K.; Gelman, Susan A.; Kross, Ethan

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104886

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…In other words, genetic essentialism would appear to reflect thinking about the donor at the level of the category to which he belongs (viewing the donor as “not one of us”), rather than a focus on the qualities or motivations of the donor as an individual. The interpretation that othering leads to harsher punishment is also consistent with recent work indicating that punishment judgments are substantially higher when judging distant versus close others (e.g., a stranger vs. a family member) who engage in moral violations (Berg et al, 2021; Soter et al, 2021; Weidman et al, 2020). In that work, participants never learned about why the person engaged in the criminal act—all of the “action” was at the level of whether they were in or out of the respondent’s close group.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Genetic essentialist beliefs about criminality predict harshness of recommended punishment.

Meyer¹,

Dolins²,

Grijalva³

et al. 2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Genetic essentialism is a set of beliefs holding that certain categories have a heritable, intrinsic, and biological basis. The current studies explore people's genetic essentialist beliefs about criminality, how such essentialism relates to beliefs about appropriate punishment, and the kinds of judgments and motivations that underlie these associations. Study 1 validated a novel task, in which respondents estimated how possible it would be for a child to inherit criminal behavior from a sperm donor with whom they had no contact. Studies 2-4 used this task to address how genetic essentialist beliefs related to the harmfulness of a crime and the harshness of recommended punishment. Results indicated a tendency to essentialize both low-and high-harm crimes, though genetic essentialism was higher for more harmful crimes. Moreover, genetic essentialist beliefs predicted recommendations for harsher punishments, with retributive and protective motivations, as well as perceptions of recidivism risk, partially mediating this association. Further, Studies 3 and 4 found that genetic essentialism positively predicted support for harsh punishments such as the death penalty, as well as support for directing financial resources more toward law enforcement and less toward social support. Lay theories about criminality may have profound implications for decisions about appropriate punishment for wrongdoers, as well as broader policy decisions about crime, punishment, and resource allocation.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Genetic essentialist beliefs about criminality predict harshness of recommended punishment.

Meyer¹,

Dolins²,

Grijalva³

et al. 2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Even though a lot of people are aware that they should not help the perpetrators, they choose to do so eventually. In the studies by Soter and her colleagues, responses toward others' moral transgressions were assessed through self-report [7]. The experiment asked participants to imagine a scenario in their closest and the most distant acquaintances conducting serious theft.…”

Section: The Impact Of Closeness With Perpetratormentioning

confidence: 99%

Influences of Gender and Relationship on Moral Judgement

Zhang¹

2023

EHSS

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The morality of humanity has been discussed intensively and analyzed nowadays. Scientists believe that human beings have a natural moral standard. Plus, theories about ethics are always described into two main categories, i.e., utilitarianism and deontology. Even though people’s moral judgment is deeply investigated, the influences of relationships and genders are often neglected. Recently, some articles related to relationships and genders indicated that the two factors are very influential in making moral judgments. Not only the relationship between the witness and the moral transgressor may affect people’s moral judgment about the transgression, but also the relationship between the witness and the victim. Males and females sometimes respond with different moral judgments to the same situation due to gender differences, such as emotional repression and guilt-proneness. The influence of relationships also differs in genders. Existed experiments still have limitations, such as unauthenticity and division according to biological gender or gender identity. Future direction should focus on increasing the authenticity of moral scenarios and assessing the correlation between gender identity and moral judgment. For the development of curriculums regarding moral development, this review could provide some guidance.

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“…Prescriptive reasoning has often been observed to be more other-regarding than descriptive expectations or behaviors, particularly when self-interests are at stake (e.g., DeJesus et al, 2014;Smith et al, 2013;Soter et al, 2021). Therefore, we included descriptive judgment and decisions as comparisons to prescriptive judgment.…”

Section: Beyond Our Tribe: Developing a Normative Sense Of Group-tran...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Our Tribe: Developing a Normative Sense of Group-Transcendent Fairness

Yang

Dunham

2022

SSRN Journal

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What we would (but shouldn't) do for those we love: Universalism versus partiality in responding to others' moral transgressions

Cited by 7 publications

References 61 publications

Genetic essentialist beliefs about criminality predict harshness of recommended punishment.

Genetic essentialist beliefs about criminality predict harshness of recommended punishment.

Influences of Gender and Relationship on Moral Judgement

Beyond Our Tribe: Developing a Normative Sense of Group-Transcendent Fairness

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