Advances in Experimental Moral Psychology

Hagop Sarkissian, Jennifer Cole Wright

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781472507853
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Advances in Experimental Moral Psychology brings together leading scholars in the field to provide fresh theoretical perspectives on research in philosophy and psychology. Reflecting a diverse and active field of study, contributors are drawn from across both subjects to pursue central questions concerning moral psychology. Covering a wide-ranging selection of arguments, issues and debates, topics includes the role of emotion in moral judgment (both at a general theoretical level and with regards to specific topics); the moral psychology behind political orientation; the nature and content of moral character and more higher-order questions concerning the status of morality itself. For philosophers and researchers in the social and behavioral science, this exciting new volume reveals the beneficial results of integrating these two disciplines and illustrates the promise of this experimental approach to moral psychology.

Part One

Moral Persons

1

The Character in Competence

Piercarlo Valdesolo*

Perseverance, grit, efficiency, focus, determination, discipline, industriousness, fortitude, skill. According to existing models of person perception and most experimental studies of moral cognition, these kinds of traits are typically not considered to be relevant to evaluations of moral character (c.f. Pizarro and Tannenbaum 2011). Goodness and badness tend to be defined according to whether or not an individual is likely to be hostile or threatening toward the self. As such, traits and states associated with this perceived likelihood (e.g., compassion, empathy, and trustworthiness) dominate the literature in moral psychology. This flies in the face of a long tradition in virtue ethics that identifies the competence-based qualities listed above as belonging to a broader set of “intellectual virtues,” conceptually distinct but no less important to character than “moral virtues” (Aristotle, fourth-century B.C.E; Grube and Reeve 1992). Of course, studies of person perception are simply interested in describing the qualities that contribute to overall assessments of others, and not at all concerned with philosophical accounts of what kinds of traits ought to compose moral character. That said, it might strike some as odd that such intellectual virtues are not, according to existing evidence, considered by most perceivers to be morally relevant. And it might strike some as odd that investigations into the processes by which we evaluate others along these dimensions are relatively rare in moral cognition research.

This chapter intends to argue that such evaluations might, in fact, be relevant to individuals’ assessments of moral character and that their categorization as amoral in person perception is misleading. Furthermore, their absence from work on moral cognition represents a gap in the literature that might be profitably filled in the future. I will begin by describing the most well-supported model of person perception (Stereotype Content Model), and how the core components of this model are thought to relate to moral judgments. I will then argue that the underemphasis of these “intellectual virtues” results from a tendency to see the moral virtues as other-oriented and the intellectual virtues as self-oriented. This distinction, however, might be dependent on a prioritization of short-term interests as compared to long-term interests in orienting ourselves to others. Specifically, I will suggest ways in which the behavior promoted by the “intellectual virtues” might be equally important to other-oriented outcomes. As such, intellectual virtues might be relevant to evaluations of moral character that consider long-term outcomes, and their importance might not be reflected in individuals’ first impressions of interaction partners. In other words, the relevance of competence-based traits to moral character may track the impact that those traits have on others’ well-being. Since ultimate human flourishing requires societies composed of individuals who are both warm and competent, the moral relevance of competence will increase as perspective shifts from the short term to the long term. I will conclude with suggestions for how moral cognition could benefit from the study of the processes underlying the intellectual virtues.

Person perception and moral character

Research in person perception has identified two broad dimensions of social cognition that guide our global impressions of others, as well as our emotional and behavioral responses to interaction partners: warmth and competence (Fiske et al. 2007). Some form of these two dimensions can be traced back throughout much of the literature in social cognition, though they have taken on different labels depending on the particular theory. For example, Rosenberg et al. (1968) instructed participants to sort 64 trait words into categories that were likely to be found in another person. These participants generated two orthogonal dimensions of person perception: intellectual good/bad (defined by traits such as determined, industrious, skillful, intelligent), and social good/bad (defined by traits such as warm, honest, helpful, sincere)—two dimensions that are conceptually similar to warmth and competence. Recent research in face perception has also demonstrated the ease and speed with which participants will judge trustworthiness and competence from short exposures to faces (Todorov et al. 2006; Willis and Todorov 2006)—again, two dimensions that overlap significantly, if not completely, with warmth and competence.

These dimensions reflect basic and adaptive categories of evaluations: the need to anticipate actors’ intentions toward oneself (warmth) and the need to anticipate an actor’s ability to act on their intentions (competence). In other words, these evaluations allow us to answer the questions “Does the other intend help or harm?” and “can the other carry out this intent?” (Cuddy et al. 2008).

Though this distinction in the literature on person perception maps very closely onto the two separate categories of virtues identified by philosophers (intellectual vs. moral), theorists have drawn a sharp divide between the moral relevance of these traits. Put simply, traits that communicate warmth are morally relevant, while traits that communicate competence are not. Virtue ethicists, on the other hand, see merit not only in character traits associated with what most contemporary models of person perception identify as “warmth,” but also in traits identifiable as relevant to “competence” (intelligence, fortitude, perseverance, skill; c.f. Dent 1975; Sherman 1989).

This moral distinction is evident throughout much of the literature in social cognition and is presumed to be due to the self-versus other-focused nature of the traits associated with each dimension. Traits related to warmth, such as friendliness, honesty, and kindness, tend to motivate other-oriented behavior (e.g., altruism), whereas traits associated with competence, such as efficacy, perseverance, creativity, and intelligence, tend to motivate self-oriented behavior (e.g., practicing a skill; Peeters 2001). Indeed, past theories that have posited a similar kind of two-dimensional approach to person perception have made the distinction more explicit by using the labels of “morality” and “competence” to describe the two kinds of evaluations (Phalet and Poppe 1997). Some work even conceptualizes these two domains as operating in tension with one another, arguing that traits promoting other-oriented concerns interfere with the development of traits promoting self-interest, and vice versa (Schwartz 1992).

Why this asymmetry in the moral relevance between self-versus other-focused traits? One possible interpretation is that perceivers value other-oriented traits because they are thought to be more likely to directly benefit themselves. Warmth motivates others to care for us whereas behaviors motivated by others’ competence do not seem to directly impact our fortunes. The kinds of appraisals that are thought to underlie judgments of warmth and competence seem to corroborate such an interpretation. Specifically, evaluations of competition and status have been found to predict the degree to which individuals judge others to be competent and warm, respectively. I will discuss these in turn.

Individuals and groups are “competitive” if they have goals that are perceived to be incompatible with the goals of the perceiver. For example, competitive others would desire to maximize their own resources at the expense of others’ ability to acquire resources. These assessments inform our judgments of others’ social intents, carving the social world up into those who intend to facilitate the achievement of our own goals, and those who seem to have no such intention. Perceptions of warmth follow directly from this evaluation.

Appraisals of “competition” track closely to group membership. Because ingroup members tend not to compete with a perceiver for resources (though this may vary depending upon the ingroup in question), they are judged to be low in competitiveness and therefore trigger perceptions of warmth, while outgroup members are judged to be higher in competitiveness and, therefore, colder. Similar effects would be expected regardless of the dimensions along which group membership is perceived. Perceived similarity to another is dynamically evaluated along multiple dimensions of identity (Tversky 1977). Any such perceived similarity should trigger appraisals of low competition and high warmth. In sum, targets with whom we share identity, and consequently from whom we can expect to benefit, are considered to be high in warmth. These considerations, in turn, determine perceptions of moral character.

Evaluations of the “status” of individuals and groups inform judgments of competence given the assumption that status is a reliable indicator of ability. The degree to which an individual is capable of pursuing and achieving her goals is presumed to be reflected in their place in society. As such, high-status targets are judged to be more highly competent than low-status targets. These considerations are not considered to be morally relevant.

Taking the effect of status and competition on person perception together, it seems that the moral relevance of a trait is largely defined by the degree to which that trait motivates behavior that confers benefits on anyone other than the actor—in other words, behavior that is more likely to bring about behavior that profits the self.

The valence of the emotional responses to targets categorized along these dimensions supports this view. The stereotype content model posits specific sets of emotional responses triggered by the various combinations of these two dimensions and, in thinking about their relevance to moral judgments, it is instructive to examine the content of these emotions. The perception of both warmth and competence in targets elicits primarily admiration from others (Cuddy et al. 2008). These individuals are evaluated as having goals that are compatible with those of the perceiver, and they have the skills requisite to help perceivers achieve those goals. In other words, individuals high in both warmth and competence are our most socially valued interaction partners. The perception of warmth without competence elicits pity, competence without warmth triggers envy, and the absence of both triggers contempt and disgust (Cuddy et al. 2008).

The organization of these emotional responses with regard to self-versus other-benefiting actions also squares nicely with recent research showing the paradoxical nature of perceiver’s responses to moral behavior on the part of individuals perceived to have traits that seem similar to warmth or competence (Pavarini and Schnall 2014). Admiration is elicited in response to the moral behavior of warm (i.e., low competition) others, while the same behavior by those considered to be low in warmth (i.e., high competition) elicits envy.

Indeed, the fact that perceivers discount the moral relevance of competence traits relative to warmth traits could be a simple function of an ingroup bias. We have negative emotional responses toward outgroup competent others, because they might not be favorably oriented toward us. The bias against the importance of general competence in judgments of moral character, compared to general warmth, seems to be a reflection of a self-interested motivation to maximize the likelihood of resource acquisition. Evidence in line with this interpretation shows that perceivers value competence more positively in close others (“a close friend”) compared to less close others (“distant peers”). Though warmth judgments still carry more weight in predicting positivity toward...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Experimental Moral Psychology: An Introduction Hagop Sarkissian and Jennifer Cole Wright
• Part 1 Moral Persons
• Part 2 Moral Groundings
• Part 3 Measuring Morality
• Index
• Copyright