Atualização assimétrica de crenças acerca do comportamento moral dos outros

Tese de mestrado, Psicologia (Área de Especialização em Cognição Social Aplicada), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Psicologia, 2020Apesar de vivermos, em grande parte, rodeados de pessoas que presumivelmente consideramos boas do ponto de vista moral, tendemos a pensar negativamente sobre o comportamento moral da humanidade. De acordo com a literatura em Psicologia Social a respeito dos vieses comparativos, do self-interest e cinismo atribucional e do viés de negatividade, tal parece dever-se ao facto de possuirmos uma propensão: para nos avaliarmos mais positivamente em comparação com os outros (e, em consequência, para avaliarmos os outros mais negativamente em comparação connosco); para atribuir motivações egoístas ao comportamento dos outros (e mesmo quando nos deparamos com comportamentos aparentemente bons, tendemos a reconstruí-los de forma negativa); e para conferir mais peso a informação com valência negativa do que a informação com valência positiva. Recorrendo a um paradigma de atualização de crenças, o presente trabalho vem complementar o conhecimento em torno do fenómeno, ao demonstrar que a manutenção deste cinismo em relação ao comportamento dos outros no domínio moral deve ser, pelo menos em parte, possibilitada por um processo de atualização de crenças assimétrica pessimista. Este processo é caracterizado por uma maior facilidade de assimilação de nova informação negativa ou pessimista acerca do comportamento dos outros do que de nova informação positiva ou otimista e opera particularmente quando as pessoas se deparam com comportamentos imorais, por oposição a morais. Este trabalho replica ainda evidências da existência de um efeito better-than-average (BTA) no domínio moral, mais evidente no caso dos comportamentos imorais do que no caso dos comportamentos morais. A ausência de correlações significativas entre este efeito BTA e o efeito de atualização cínica de crenças não apoia uma abordagem motivacional ao fenómeno. São discutidas potenciais implicações destes resultados para a Psicologia Social e para a sociedade em geral, apontadas limitações do estudo e sugeridas possíveis direções futuras.Even though we largely live surrounded by people we presumably consider good from a moral standpoint, we tend to think negatively about humanity’s moral behavior. According to the literature in Social Psychology regarding comparative biases, self-interest and attributional cynicism and the negativity bias, this appears to be due to the fact that we possess a general propensity: to evaluate ourselves more positively in comparison to others (and, as a result, to evaluate others more negatively in comparison to ourselves); to attribute selfish motives to other people’s behavior (and even when we come across apparently good behavior, we tend to reconstrue it in a negative light); and to give more weight to negatively valanced information than positively valanced information. Using a belief updating paradigm, the present work complements knowledge around this phenomenon, demonstrating that the persistence of this cynicism concerning other people’s behavior in the moral domain should be, at least in part, made possible by a process of pessimistic asymmetric belief updating. This process is defined by an easier assimilation of new negative or pessimistic information regarding other people’s behavior than of new positive or optimistic information and operates particularly when people face immoral, as opposed to moral behavior. This work also replicates evidence of the existence of a better-than-average (BTA) effect in the moral domain, more pronounced in the case of immoral than moral behavior. The absence of significant correlations between this BTA effect and the cynical belief updating effect does not give support to a motivational approach to the phenomenon. Potential implications of these results to Social Psychology and society in general are further discussed, limitations of the study pointed out and possible future directions proposed

Who will be nice and who will be nasty?: a cross-cultural investigation of children’s moral trait inferences

In this thesis, four studies were conducted to examine how children aged 4 to 8 years and adults from China and Australia made moral trait inferences of other people on the basis of their inconsistent past actions that were dependent on contexts and motives. Specifically, in studies 1 and 2, the protagonists behaved inconsistently towards different child recipients when no adults were present, either in a predominantly prosocial or antisocial way. Next, in study 3, the predominantly prosocial protagonists undertook their prosocial behaviours either in the presence of a female teacher or in her absence. Finally, in study 4, participants were explicitly told that the protagonists’ prosocial behaviours were arising from self-presentational motives in the presence of the teacher, and were arising from altruistic motives in her absence. After each story, participants were asked to make trait judgments (study 1 to 4), motive attributions (study 3), and behaviour predictions (study 1 to 4) of the protagonist. It was found that, first, children did not start to negatively evaluate protagonists whose prosocial behaviors arose from self-presentational motives until about 8 years of age, at which time they judged that protagonists whose prosocial behaviors arose from altruistic motives to be nicer. Young children, and especially the 4-year-olds, were insensitive to contextual cues betraying self-presentational motives, and they were also susceptible to a recency effect, such that their trait judgments were highly influenced by the outcome of the last behavior exemplar in the story vignettes. Second, Chinese children were more sensitive to contextual and motive information than Australian children. Eight-year-olds from China, but not Australia, were able to spontaneously infer a protagonist’s self-presentational motives and make negative evaluations of the protagonist when they observed that his/her prosocial behaviors were only manifest in the presence of an authority figure. These older Chinese children also expected more positive future behaviors from the altruistic protagonists than from the protagonists who had self-presentational motives, thus demonstrating a clear cultural difference in sensitivity to contextual and motive information when making moral trait inferences

A reputation management and signalling account of moral disgust and moral contagion

Moral disgust is thought to be an emotion arising from perceptions of immorality as physically contaminating, in part based on experiments showing that participants are unwilling to contact immoral objects like a Nazi's armband. Here it is proposed that apparent contagiousness of immorality is driven by desire to avoid reputation harm by visibly associating with immorality. Hypothetical (Study 1) and behavioural (Study 2) evidence supported this account. Participants preferred to wear a Nazi armband under rather than over their clothing, even though this meant direct skin contact. The "under" preference was stronger with an audience. Participant reports revealed little contamination concern but strong reputation concern. Changing perspective, targets who touched but concealed the armband were not seen as contaminated or immoral (Study 3). If disgust reported towards immorality is not contaminating, it may not reflect activation of the full emotion of disgust. Instead, people may express disgust to communicate particular motives. Unlike anger, which can be seen as self-interested, disgust communicates a more principled, moral motivation. Studies 4 and 5 used scenarios to show that observers infer more moral motivation from an expression of disgust and more self-interested motivation from anger. Studies 6, 7 and 8 demonstrated that participants are more likely to choose to express disgust to show moral concern and anger to protest harm to one's self-interest. These findings offer a new perspective for understanding the role of disgust in morality: disgust is not expressed because people feel an internal state of disgust but because disgust effectively communicates morally motivated condemnation