Psychology Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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Social Psychology on Moral Reasoning - Dictionary of Arguments
Parisi I 143 Moral Reasoning/motivation/Social Psychology/Nadler/Mueller: When decision-makers have a preference regarding the outcome, they sometimes engage in biased processing of information to make it more likely that their desired outcome is attained (Kunda, 1990)(1). Motivated cognition permits Parisi I 144 individuals to reach outcomes they desire while allowing them to maintain the illusion that they are acting objectively (Ditto, Pizarro, and Tannenbaum, 2009(2); Kunda, 1990(1); Pyszczynski and Greenberg, 1987(3)). >Motivation, >Morals, >Morality. (…) people engage in motivated mind reading when assessing mental states (Mueller, Solan, and Darley, 2012)(4), but this is one instantiation of a much broader phenomenon. It is likely that jurors' cognitive processes are influenced by their motivations across a wide variety of judgments. For instance, Sood and Darley (2012)(5) found that people's desire to punish behavior they view as morally offensive (e.g. going to the supermarket in the nude) changes their perceptions of the harmfulness of that behavior, but only when a finding of harm is required for liability. As a general matter, most people perceive that someone going to the supermarket in the nude is not harmful, though they still find it objectionable. However, when they are told that the harm principle requires that an action must be harmful to be criminalized, participants rate that behavior as more harmful. Thus, people reach the outcome they desire by perceiving the underlying behavior in a way that supports the outcome. Intention: Motivated reasoning can also operate when people assess the magnitude of harm, sometimes even emerging in rapid subjective assessments. For example, participants in a laboratory experiment were told that their partner could choose for them to receive an electric shock, or to hear a set of tones (Grey and Wegner, 2008)(6). a) In the intentional condition, the participant received a shock and was told that was the option their partner chose; b) in the unintentional condition, the participant received a shock and was told that their partner chose the other option of hearing the tones, but the opposite task was assigned unbeknownst to their partner. Participants who received intentional shocks experienced them as significantly more painful than those who received unintentional shocks. The extent to which harm is intended therefore seems to influence the perceived meaning of that harm, which in turn influenced the experience of pain itself. Damage estimation: Intentional harms can also influence jurors' evaluation of damages. In one set of experiments, people quickly viewed a series of damage amounts resulting from a river drying up (e.g. "crops destroyed: $759.87") and later were asked to estimate the sum total of damages (Ames and Fiske, 2013)(7). When the damage was caused intentionally (a man upstream diverted the river) participants Parisi I 145 inflated their estimate, whereas those who were told that the harm was unintentional were quite accurate in their assessment. 1. Kunda, Ziva (1990). "The Case for Motivated Reasoning." Psychological Bulletin 108(3):480. 2. Ditto, Peter H., David A. Pizarro, and David Tannenbaum (2009). "Motivated Moral Reasoning." Psychology of Learning and Motivation 50:307-338. 3. Pyszczynski, Tom and Jeff Greenberg (1987). " Toward an Integration of Cognitive and Motivational Perspectives on Social Inference: A Biased Hypothesis-testing Model." Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 20: 297-340. 4. Mueller, Pam A., Lawrence M. Solan, and John M. Darley (2012). "When Does Knowledge Become Intent? Perceiving the Minds of Wrongdoers." Journal of Empirical Legal studies 9(4):859-892 5. Sood, Avani Mehta and John M. Darley (2012). " The Plasticity of Harm in the Service of Criminalization Goals." California Law Review: 1313-1358. 6. Gray, Kurt and Daniel M. Wegner. "Blaming God for Our Pain: Human Suffering and the Divine Mind." Personality and Social Psychology Review 14(1): 7-16. 7. Ames, Daniel L. and Susan T. Fiske (2013). "Intentional Harms Are Worse, Even When They're Not." Psychological Science 24(9): 1755-1762. Nadler, Janice and Pam A. Mueller. „Social Psychology and the Law“. In: Parisi, Francesco (ed) (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics. Vol 1: Methodology and Concepts. NY: Oxford University Press_____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Social Psychology Parisi I Francesco Parisi (Ed) The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Volume 1: Methodology and Concepts New York 2017 |
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