Judgments of Apathy vs. Harm Towards Socially Proximal vs. Distant Others - Research

Not Our Fault: Judgments of Apathy vs. Harm Towards Socially Proximal vs. Distant Others “My life is really evil. There are people who starve in the world, and I drive an Infiniti… there are people who are born and then they starve and then they die and that’s all they ever did. It is tota...

Not Our Fault: Judgments of Apathy vs. Harm Towards Socially Proximal vs. Distant Others “My life is really evil. There are people who starve in the world, and I drive an Infiniti… there are people who are born and then they starve and then they die and that’s all they ever did. It is totally my fault, because I could trade my Infiniti for a really good car, like a nice Ford Focus with no miles on it, and I get back like 20,000 Dollars, and I could save hundreds of people from dying of starvation with that money. And every day, I don’t do it. Every day I make them die with my car.” - Louis C.K.  Moral inconsistency People from rich western countries still continue to turn a blind eye as millions of individuals continue to die from easily-preventable illness and malnutrition. Despite this apathy people maintain a sense of moral integrity, and in general consider themselves to be of good moral character (Batson et al., 1999; Reese, Berthold, & Steffens, 2012).  Ingroup-Focused Morality Much research shows that people are less concerned with the fate of individuals who are perceived as more socially distant (e.g., Tronto, 1993; Cikara, Farnsworth, Harris, & Fiske, 2010; Duclos & Barasch, 2014,).  But... Real-world evidence to attest that people are not completely indifferent to the fates of out-group members. Example: the February 15th, 2003 protest against the Iraq war remains, by a large margin, the single greatest assembly of individuals in support of a moral cause: between 6 to 10 million people around the world. How can we explain the difference in response to lives lost from war vs. apathy?  Harm-Focused Morality “The omission bias”: the omission of care is viewed less negatively as compared to the commission of harm (Spranca, Minsk, & Baron, 1990; Spranca, Minsk, & Baron, 1991) Commission of harm - harming one’s health, property, and so forth (stealing, for example) Omission of care - not giving aid and support to someone in need (not donating for example) Negative and positive rights Negative rights - The moral and legal status of people’s expectation that the actions of other people do not harm one’s health, property, and so forth Positive rights: The moral and legal status of people’s expectation to receive active assistance and care from others, be it in the form of minimal standards of living, health-care, and so forth.  Ingroup focused morality Harm focused morality How these two moral principles interact in moral decision making? Ingroup-Focused Morality and Harm-Focused Morality provide independent contributions to the severity of moral judgement. Harm-Focused Morality and Ingroup-Biased Morality may not be independent of each other.  No interaction Commission of harm Commission of harm Omission of care Judgement of immorality Omission of care proximal social distance distal  Interaction Commission of harm Commission of harm Omission of care Judgement of immorality Omission of care proximal social distance distal Why do we expect this interaction Our assumption is based on theories of moral psychology (e.g., Giligan, 1986; Januoff-Bulman, Sheikh, & Hepp, 2009) that argue that whereas moral reasnoning concerning harmful acts is universally-applicable, judgements of care (or lackthereof) are more dependent on social context.  Why is it important? The extereme cases of avoidable human suffering are characterized by a “double jeoparday”: These tragedies are not intentionally inflicted (i.e., do not evoke our Harm-Focused Morality) These tragedies are not intentionally inflicted happen to distant others (i.e., do not evoke our Ingroup-Biased Morality).  Experiment 1 Stealing (harm) VS not supporting (care) Brother (Close) VS friend (Distant)  Assumptions Stealing Stealing Not supporting Harshment of judgement Not supporting Brother Friend social distance  Participants Participants were 188 residents of the United States (68 women, 120 men) Study via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Twelve additional participants did not finish the study. The sample size (100 participants per group) was predetermined prior to data collection. Negative Right Violation Vignette. “John and a friend [his brother] filled out a lottery form together. Time has passed, and both of them have forgotten to check the numbers against the lottery results. A few months later, John discovers that they have won an amount of 220,000 Dollars. He cashed in the ticket, but decides not to tell his friend [brother].” Positive Right Violation Vignette. “Dave won 3,000,000 Dollars in the lottery. A day later after finding out about his prize, he calls his friend [brother] to tell him about the good news. Dave's friend [brother] is very happy for him. He also tells him that he is currently falling behind on his mortgage payments, and that he is in grave need of about 30,000 Dollars in financial assistance. Dave decides not to give his friend [brother] any money.  Results All raw data for the experiments is available at the Open Science Framework (http://osf.io/trme2). ANOVA Within-participants variable Violation Type (negative vs. positive) as a within-participants variable Between-participants independent variables Social Distance (distant vs. proximal) Participant’s Gender (male vs. female) Political Orientation (conservative vs. liberal)  Results Participants judged the negative-right violation more severely (M = 83.643, SD = 24.082) than the positive-right violation (M = 41.579, SD = 31.659), F(1, 176) = 221.78, p <.001. Participants judged violations of the rights of proximal others (M = 69.321, SD = 21.556) more severely than violations of the rights of distant others (M = 55.758, SD = 17.906), F(1, 176) = 19.49, p <.001. Interaction between Violation Type and Social Distance, F(1, 176) = 11.94, p <.001, partial eta squared =.063.  More Results For the negative right violation (i.e., not telling the friend/brother that the ticket has won), there was no significant difference between the proximal (M = 85.600, SD = 23.915) and distant (M = 81.645, SD = 24.216) conditions, F(1, 176) = 1.16, p =.282 For the positive right violation (i.e., not giving the friend/brother money after winning the lottery), there was an effect of distance whereby participants judged the failure to provide care more severely for proximal others (M = 53.0421, SD = 32.262) as compared with distant others (M = 29.870, SD = 26.448), F(1, 176) = 25.55, p <.001 (Fig. 1). Liberals judged violations of positive rights (M = 44.099, SD = 30.399) more severely than conservatives (M = 35.651, SD = 34.98), F(1, 138) = 2.25, p =.135 Results Results  Experiment 2 Friend (close) VS fellow student (distant) Stealing (harm) VS not supporting (care)  Assumptions Stealing Stealing Not supporting Harshment of judgement Not supporting Friend Fellow student social distance  Participants 195 residents of the United States (108 women, 87 men) Study via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. 5 participants did not finish the study. The sample size (100 participants per group) was predetermined prior to data collection. Negative Right Violation Vignette. “John is a college student. In order to support himself, he works as a guide at the local campus. He accompanies potential students and their parents as they visit the college, and shows them around. His best friend [a fellow student named] Greg also works as a guide. One day, John and Greg were assigned to jointly accompany a family. When they came to the end of the tour, Greg greeted the family goodbye and headed quickly to class. When John came to say goodbye to the family, the father shook his hand and said that both him and Greg were very helpful. He gave John two 100 Dollar bills, and told him to give Greg half of the money. John decided to keep the money and not share it with Greg.” Positive Right Violation Vignette. “Dave is a college student. His best friend Chris studies with him [One of the fellow Students in Dave's college, is a guy named Chris]. Chris was diagnosed with severe illness and is in a state of a medically induced coma. The only chance to save his life is with a very costly medical procedure which his family cannot afford. The college student’s union decided to put donation boxes across campus, and posted signs saying that if every student donated only 2 Dollars, there will be enough money to save Chris's life. Despite having many opportunities to contribute, and despite being relatively wealthy, Dave did not donate any money to help save Chris.”  Results Participants judged the negative-right violation more severely (M = 83.400, SD = 21.532) than the positive-right violation (M = 67.230, SD = 30.704), F(1, 183) = 62.84, p <.001. Participants judged violations of the rights of proximal others (M = 79.625, SD = 19.249) more severely than violations of the rights of distant others (M = 69.965, SD = 22.082), F(1, 183) = 7.04, p =.008. An interaction between Violation Type and Social Distance, F(1, 183) = 26.56, p <.001, partial eta squared =.126. Simple-effects analysis revealed that for the negative right violation (i.e., not giving the fellow student/friend his money)  More Results For the positive right violation (i.e., not giving the fellow student/friend a small donation), there was an effect of distance whereby participants judged the failure to provide care more severely for proximal others (M = 77.120, SD = 25.739) as compared with distant others (M = 54.954, SD = 32.048), F(1, 183) = 21.15, p <.001, (Fig. 2). Unexpected effect of gender: women (M = 78.467, SD = 20.144) judged the protagonist more harshly than men (M = 71.402, SD = 21.643), F(1, 183) = 7.07, p =.008. No other significant effects Results Results  Experiment 3 The U.S. culture highly values personal independence (Markus & Kitayama, 1991) Attempt to replicate the findings on a sample of participants from Israel, a relatively interdependent culture (Hofstede, 1983) Replication of experiment 1 and 2 on an Israeli audience  Participants: 80 residents of Israel (40 women, 40 men) “Midgam” an online surveys panel The sample size (40 participants per group) was predetermined prior to data collection.  Experiment 1 replication Results Participants judged the negative right violation more severely (M = 90.587, SD = 15.610) than the positive right violation (M = 61.225, SD = 25.778), F(1, 76) = 119.52, p <.001. Marginally significant effect of Social Distance: participants judged violations of the rights of proximal others (M = 78.953, SD = 18.449) more severely than violations of the rights of distant others (M = 72.364, SD = 14.552, F(1, 76) = 3.113, p =.081). An interaction between Violation Type and Social Distance, F(1, 76) = 9.968, p =.002, partial eta squared =.115.  Experiment 1 replication More Results No significant difference between the proximal (M = 89.651, SD = 17.346) and distant (M = 91.675, SD = 13.470) conditions, F(1, 76) < 1; however, for the positive right violation (i.e., not giving the fellow student/friend a small donation) Effect of distance whereby participants judged the failure to provide care more severely for proximal others (M = 68.255, SD = 26.344) as compared to distant others (M = 53.054, SD = 22.822), F(1, 76) = 7.627, p =.007. No further effects.  Experiment 2 replication Results No significant effect of Social Distance; participants did not judge violations of the rights of proximal others (M = 78.686, SD = 20.433) as more severe than violations of the rights of distant others (M = 73.202, SD = 17.849 F(1, 76) = 1.6211, p =.206). An interaction between Violation Type and Social Distance, F(1, 76) = 9.028, p =.003, partial eta squared =.106.  Experiment 2 replication More Results Simple-effects analysis revealed that for the negative right violation (i.e., not giving the fellow student/friend his money) No significant difference between the proximal (M = 83.023, SD = 21.828) and distant (M = 86.189, SD = 21.168) conditions, F(1, 76) < 1; An effect of distance whereby participants judged the failure to provide care more severely for proximal others (M = 74.348, SD = 28.056) as compared to distant others (M = 60.216, SD = 20.960), F(1, 76) = 6.46, p =.013. No other significant findings. Results - all experiments Results - all experiments  Summary We found an interaction between social distance (proximal vs. distal) and violation type (positive vs. negative) Harm-Focused Morality was adopted to a greater extent for interactions between more distant individuals. This was found when differences in social distance were manifested in kin versus non-kin friendships (Exp. 1, 3a) and in a close versus collegial relationship (Exp. 2, 3b). It was also found for both north American (Exp.1, 2) and Israeli participants (Exp. 3). Implications for Moral Foundations Theory (Haidt & Joseph, 2004): Conservative place a greater weight on loyalty as compared to liberals (e.g., Hoffman, 2014; Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009). However - No difference in the ingroup bias effect between liberals and conservatives Harm and care as two endpoints on a single continuum. however, judgements of harm comission and judgements care omission are seperatly modifiable Questions