Adrian F. Ward

The Myth of Harmless Wrongs in Moral Cognition: Automatic Dyadic Completion From Sin to Suffering

When something is wrong, someone is harmed. This hypothesis derives from the theory of dyadic morality, which suggests a moral cognitive template of wrongdoing agent and suffering patient (i.e., victim). This dyadic template means that victimless wrongs (e.g., masturbation) are psychologically incomplete, compelling the mind to perceive victims even when they are objectively absent. Five studies reveal that dyadic completion occurs automatically and implicitly: Ostensibly harmless wrongs are perceived to have victims (Study 1), activate concepts of harm (Studies 2 and 3), and increase perceptions of suffering (Studies 4 and 5). These results suggest that perceiving harm in immorality is intuitive and does not require effortful rationalization. This interpretation argues against both standard interpretations of moral dumbfounding and domain-specific theories of morality that assume the psychological existence of harmless wrongs. Dyadic completion also suggests that moral dilemmas in which wrongness (deontology) and harm (utilitarianism) conflict are unrepresentative of typical moral cognition.

Paying It Forward: Generalized Reciprocity and the Limits of Generosity

When people are the victims of greed or recipients of generosity, their first impulse is often to pay back that behavior in kind. What happens when people cannot reciprocate, but instead have the chance to be cruel or kind to someone entirely different--to pay it forward? In 5 experiments, participants received greedy, equal, or generous divisions of money or labor from an anonymous person and then divided additional resources with a new anonymous person. While equal treatment was paid forward in kind, greed was paid forward more than generosity. This asymmetry was driven by negative affect, such that a positive affect intervention disrupted the tendency to pay greed forward. Implications for models of generalized reciprocity are discussed.

Supernormal: How the Internet Is Changing Our Memories and Our Minds

We are creatures of flesh and blood, living in a world of bits and bytes—a world shaped by the Internet. With the simple touch of a button or swipe of a finger, we can instantaneously access vast amounts of information (e.g., Ashton, 2009). A few more keystrokes, and we can interact with friends 10 time zones away (e.g., Thurlow, Lengel, & Tomic, 2004). Just a few more, and we may complete the transition to a digital life, transferring our identities from our physical bodies to online avatars (e.g., Bessière, Seay, & Kiesler, 2007). Perhaps because of its pervasive influence, it’s often difficult to imagine a world without the Internet. We know there was a time when encyclopedias represented the pinnacle of information storage and communicating with faraway friends required a trip to the post office (or at least to the mailbox), but such a time feels far removed from the present moment. However, as Sparrow and Chatman (this issue) point out, the current era of digitally mediated information, communication, and exploration is a new one, a mere “blip on the timescale of human evolution” (p. 273). The Internet first made its way from private laboratories to the public sphere less than 20 years ago (Leiner et al., 2012), and many definitive elements of the Internet are newer still (e.g., Google, founded in 1998; Wikipedia, founded in 2001). For millions of years of evolution (e.g., Tattersall, 2001), “social networks” referred not to thousands of Facebook friends but to small groups of daily interaction partners (Dunbar, 1993) and information search consisted not of typing keywords into Google but of seeking out personally known experts (Wegner, 1995). Our basic cognitive architecture developed in this environment—one far removed from the present Internet Age—and most likely has not changed in the last 20 years (e.g., Bowlby, 1969; Tooby & Cosmides, 1990). When old cognitive tendencies and new technologies meet—when the world of flesh and blood collides with the world of bits and bytes—the Internet may act as a “supernormal stimulus,” hijacking preexisting cognitive tendencies and creating novel outcomes. Supernormal stimuli meet or exceed long-enforced selection criteria, but are generally foreign to the environments in which these criteria developed; as a result, these new stimuli often elicit greater responses than any naturally occurring stimuli. The Internet may produce supernormal stimulus effects in many domains; for example, relatively unidirectional Internet-based communication such as blogging and tweeting may capitalize on the intrinsic rewards associated with social sharing (Tamir & Mitchell, 2012) while protecting individuals from costs associated with social anxiety (e.g., Leary & Kowalski, 1997), and experimenting with alternate identities online (e.g., Yee, 2006) may allow people to fulfill intrapsychic needs (such as the need for power; McClelland, 1961) without incurring interpersonal costs (e.g., Brewer, 1991). Internet-related supernormal stimulus effects may be particularly powerful in the domain of memory. Research on transactive memory indicates that incoming information is distributed between both internal and external storage devices (e.g., Wegner, 1986; Wegner, Giuliano, & Hertel, 1985). People may store information in their own minds, or they may offload responsibility for this information to external storage devices such as friends, family, books, or—most recently—the Internet. For much of human history, the criteria used for distributing responsibility (e.g., expertise, accessibility) ensured that memories were spread throughout social groups. However, the Internet—a supernormal stimulus—seems to outperform all other external storage devices, potentially leading people to offload responsibility for the vast majority of information to this single digital resource. My research explores how this shift toward digital information storage—and away from biological information storage (both in terms of utilizing other people and utilizing one’s own memory)—may have large-scale and long-term effects on the way people remember and process information.

Give What You Get: Capuchin Monkeys (Cebus apella) and 4-Year-Old Children Pay Forward Positive and Negative Outcomes to Conspecifics

The breadth of human generosity is unparalleled in the natural world, and much research has explored the mechanisms underlying and motivating human prosocial behavior. Recent work has focused on the spread of prosocial behavior within groups through paying-it-forward, a case of human prosociality in which a recipient of generosity pays a good deed forward to a third individual, rather than back to the original source of generosity. While research shows that human adults do indeed pay forward generosity, little is known about the origins of this behavior. Here, we show that both capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and 4-year-old children pay forward positive and negative outcomes in an identical testing paradigm. These results suggest that a cognitively simple mechanism present early in phylogeny and ontogeny leads to paying forward positive, as well as negative, outcomes.

Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

Our smartphones enable—and encourage—constant connection to information, entertainment, and each other. They put the world at our fingertips, and rarely leave our sides. Although these devices have immense potential to improve welfare, their persistent presence may come at a cognitive cost. In this research, we test the “brain drain” hypothesis that the mere presence of one’s own smartphone may occupy limited-capacity cognitive resources, thereby leaving fewer resources available for other tasks and undercutting cognitive performance. Results from two experiments indicate that even when people are successful at maintaining sustained attention—as when avoiding the temptation to check their phones—the mere presence of these devices reduces available cognitive capacity. Moreover, these cognitive costs are highest for those highest in smartphone dependence. We conclude by discussing the practical implications of this smartphone-induced brain drain for consumer decision-making and consumer welfare.

Mind-blanking: when the mind goes away

People often feel like their minds and their bodies are in different places. Far from an exotic experience, this phenomenon seems to be a ubiquitous facet of human life (e.g., Killingsworth and Gilbert, 2010). Many times, peoples minds seem to go “somewhere else”—attention becomes disconnected from perception, and peoples minds wander to times and places removed from the current environment (e.g., Schooler et al., 2004). At other times, however, peoples minds may seem to go nowhere at all—they simply disappear. This mental state—mind-blanking—may represent an extreme decoupling of perception and attention, one in which attention fails to bring any stimuli into conscious awareness. In the present research, we outline the properties of mind-blanking, differentiating this mental state from other mental states in terms of phenomenological experience, behavioral outcomes, and underlying cognitive processes. Seven experiments suggest that when the mind seems to disappear, there are times when we have simply failed to monitor its whereabouts—and there are times when it is actually gone.

The Harm-Made Mind Observing Victimization Augments Attribution of Minds to Vegetative Patients, Robots, and the Dead

People often think that something must have a mind to be part of a moral interaction. However, the present research suggests that minds do not create morality but that morality creates minds. In four experiments, we found that observing intentional harm to an unconscious entity—a vegetative patient, a robot, or a corpse—leads to augmented attribution of mind to that entity. A fifth experiment reconciled these results with extant research on dehumanization by showing that observing the victimization of conscious entities leads to reduced attribution of mind to those entities. Taken together, these experiments suggest that the effects of victimization vary according to victims’ preexisting mental status and that people often make an intuitive cognitive error when unconscious entities are placed in harm’s way. People assume that if apparent moral harm occurs, then there must be someone there to experience that harm—a harm-made mind. These findings have implications for political policies concerning right-to-life issues.

Das Google-Gedächtnis

Fruher haben wir Freunde und Bekannte gefragt, wenn wir Rat oder Informationen brauchten. Heute suchen wir rasch im Internet und finden Antworten auf so ziemlich alle Lebensfragen. Dieser Kulturwandel wirkt sich auf unser Gedachtnis uns Selbstbild aus.