Alexander H. Jordan

Victim Entitlement to Behave Selfishly

Three experiments demonstrated that feeling wronged leads to a sense of entitlement and to selfish behavior. In Experiment 1, participants instructed to recall a time when their lives were unfair were more likely to refuse to help the experimenter with a supplementary task than were participants who recalled a time when they were bored. In Experiment 2, the same manipulation increased intentions to engage in a number of selfish behaviors, and this effect was mediated by self-reported entitlement to obtain positive (and avoid negative) outcomes. In Experiment 3, participants who lost at a computer game for an unfair reason (a glitch in the program) requested a more selfish money allocation for a future task than did participants who lost the game for a fair reason, and this effect was again mediated by entitlement.

Personality, Identity, and Character: The Dynamic Moral Self: A Social Psychological Perspective

When psychologists explore the role of the self in moral motivation and behavior, they typically take a personological approach. Some seek to describe a general personality structure shared by widely recognized moral exemplars, whereas others examine individual differences in the centrality of mortality to ones personal goals. A social-psychological approach to the moral self complements these personological perspectives by taking into account the situational malleability of moral self-regard, or ones self-perceived moral standing at any given moment. Recent research reviewed in this chapter demonstrates the value added by this perspective: First, when people are made secure about their morality, they sometimes act less morally (moral credentials); second, moral exemplars are disliked rather than admired when their behavior is seen as an indictment of peoples own choices (moral resentment); and third, people sometimes boost their moral self-regard to compensate for failures in other domains (moral compensation). These phenomena underscore the importance of understanding moral self-regard as just one aspect of a highly dynamic self-concept. THE SELF IN MORAL PSYCHOLOGY For decades, moral psychology mostly left the self out of its analyses. It focused instead on moral reasoning and on the cognitive underpinnings of decisions about right and wrong (Kohlberg, 1969). The neglect of the self and emphasis on the mechanics of moral reasoning was a reaction against the perceived murkiness of psychodynamic theories influential at the time, and the dearth of empirical support for concepts such as “superego strength” to explain moral learning (see Kohlberg, 1963).

Misery Has More Company Than People Think: Underestimating the Prevalence of Others’ Negative Emotions

Four studies document underestimations of the prevalence of others’ negative emotions and suggest causes and correlates of these erroneous perceptions. In Study 1a, participants reported that their negative emotions were more private or hidden than were their positive emotions; in Study 1b, participants underestimated the peer prevalence of common negative, but not positive, experiences described in Study 1a. In Study 2, people underestimated negative emotions and overestimated positive emotions even for well-known peers, and this effect was partially mediated by the degree to which those peers reported suppression of negative (vs. positive) emotions. Study 3 showed that lower estimations of the prevalence of negative emotional experiences predicted greater loneliness and rumination and lower life satisfaction and that higher estimations for positive emotional experiences predicted lower life satisfaction. Taken together, these studies suggest that people may think they are more alone in their emotional difficulties than they really are.

Levels of moralisation: a new conception of moral sensitivity

Moral sensitivity has generally been interpreted in a normative sense, as the ability to notice moral features present in a situation. This paper outlines an alternative, descriptive conception of moral sensitivity: the levels of moralisation model. This model describes four qualitatively distinct levels at which a preference can be held: no moralisation; moralisation for the self; moralisation for others; and public expression of moralisation. Empirical research supporting the existence of these levels as well as processes that move a preference across the levels are discussed. In addition, the practical utility of the model is demonstrated with regard to moral education and conflict resolution programs.

Marital Status Bias in Perceptions of Employees

Three studies documented effects of marital status on perceptions of employees or prospective employees. In Experiment 1, participants rated a married female job applicant as less suitable for employment than a single counterpart. In Experiment 2, participants again perceived a female job applicant less favorably when she was married; in contrast, a male applicant was perceived more favorably when married. In Experiment 3, participants predicted that a recently married womans job performance and dedication would decline, whereas a recently married mans dedication was predicted to rise; this difference made participants more willing to lay off the woman than the man.

Narcissism Predicts Support for Hierarchy (At Least When Narcissists Think They Can Rise to the Top)

Five studies tested the relationship between narcissism and support for hierarchy. Narcissism was associated with endorsing group-based hierarchy, income inequality, and hierarchy in business (Studies 1a–1b) and with liking organizations with a hierarchical structure (Studies 2a–2b). Analyses suggested that more narcissistic participants’ preference for a hierarchy may have been due at least partly to their current high standing in that hierarchy (Studies 1a–1b) or their expectation that they will rise in rank (Studies 2a–2b). When participants learned about an organization where it was possible or impossible to rise in rank, there was a positive relationship between narcissism and support for hierarchy if it was possible to rise in rank, whereas the same relationship was negative if it was not possible to rise in rank (Study 3). These studies provide evidence consistent with the idea that narcissistic individuals prefer hierarchies because they are or think they will be on the top.

Landy and Goodwin (2015) Confirmed Most of Our Findings Then Drew the Wrong Conclusions.

Landy and Goodwin’s (2015) meta-analysis found support for most of the experimental findings we reported in Schnall, Haidt, Clore, and Jordan (2008), including a robust amplification effect of olfactory disgust on moral judgment even in the absence of important moderator variables. Had they considered those known moderators and attended to known attributional issues, they might have confirmed all of our findings. With failed replications on various topics getting published these days, we were pleased that Landy and Goodwin’s (2015) meta-analysis supported most of the findings we reported in Schnall, Haidt, Clore, and Jordan (2008). They focused on what Pizarro, Inbar and Helion (2011) had termed the amplification hypothesis of Haidt’s (2001) social intuitionist model of moral judgment, namely that “disgust amplifies moral evaluations—it makes wrong things seem even more wrong (Pizarro et al., 2011, p. 267, emphasis in original).” Like us, Landy and Goodwin (2015) found that the overall effect of incidental disgust on moral judgment is usually small or zero when ignoring relevant moderator variables. Like us, they found that there appears to be something special about olfactory inductions – they often work even without requiring moderators. And like us, they found that the effects of incidental disgust are as strong for non-purity violations (such as falsifying a resume) as for purity violations (such as eating a dead dog). So you can imagine our puzzlement when Landy and Goodwin (2015) interpreted their findings as evidence against our experimental findings (Schnall et al., 2008) and more generally, against social intuitionism (Haidt, 2001). The puzzle resolves itself when we examine three factors that we believe they did not properly consider. First, the meta-analyses failed to include personality variables that have been shown to be crucial for the effect. In our 3 experiments that did not involve smell, the amplification effect of incidental physical disgust on moral judgments occurred only for participants who were generally sensitive to bodily sensations, as measured by the Private Body Consciousness scale (Miller, Murphy, & Buss, 1981). Landy and Goodwin did not include this established moderator variable in their analyses, nor any of the additional individual difference moderators that have been documented since then, such as attentional control (Van Dillen, van der Waal, van den Bos, 2012), emotional differentiation (Cameron, Payne, & Doris, 2013) and mindfulness (Sato & Sugiura, 2014). Their failure to find an overall effect in non-olfactory studies replicates the pattern we reported. Their reasoning that the relevant analyses were “not feasible” since only some experiments had included these moderators raises the fundamental question of why a meta-analysis was conducted on data for which essential variables had not even been assessed. Second, Landy and Goodwin (2015) minimized the importance of one of their own major findings – that for studies that used taste or smell to induce disgust, there was a clear and robust effect even without considering moderator variables. The special potency of taste and smell may be due to their direct activation of the anterior insula, which is one of the major brain regions consistently implicated in research on visceral effects on cognition (Damasio, 2003). Given that this whole line of research is about incidental disgust, not disgust that is directly elicited by a moral infraction, their confirmation that bad tastes and smells can amplify moral condemnation of unrelated actions is very clear evidence of the mechanism we previously described. After all, our goal was to demonstrate the existence of these links, which are inconsistent with a rationalist account of moral judgment, but are predicted by the social intuitionist model (Haidt, 2001), and by the affect-as-information framework (Schwarz & Clore, 1983; Schwarz, 2012). Third, experiments investigating the influence of emotional states on judgment require that participants do not correctly attribute the induced feeling to its true source (e.g., Lapate, Rokers, Li, & Davidson, 2014; Schwarz & Clore, 1983; Schnall, Abrahamson, & Laird, 2002; for a review, see Schwarz, 2012). If one experiences disgust while considering a morally questionable action, the action is likely to seem disgusting and immoral (at least, for people who are

Distinguishing war-related PTSD resulting from perpetration- and betrayal-based morally injurious events.

Objective: We investigated whether potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs) during a combat deployment may lead to PTSD through distinct pathways from danger-based events. We also examined the prevalence of perpetration-based PMIEs, during which service members behaved in ways that violated their own moral values, and betrayal-based PMIEs, during which personal moral expectations were violated by trusted others. Method: Using a sample of 867 active duty Marines from a single infantry battalion that engaged in heavy ground combat while deployed to Afghanistan, a structural equation model was built to examine the relationships between perpetration- and betrayal-based PMIEs, combat experiences, and peritraumatic dissociation reported at 1 month postdeployment, and guilt/shame, anger, and PTSD symptoms reported at 8 months postdeployment. Results: The relationship between betrayal-based PMIEs and PTSD was mediated by anger (&bgr; = .14). There was marginal evidence of mediation of the relationship between perpetration-based PMIEs and PTSD by shame and guilt (&bgr; = .09), and of the relationship between danger-based combat events and PTSD by peritraumatic dissociation (&bgr; = .08). No significant direct relationships were found between any of these 3 types of events and subsequent PTSD. Perceived perpetration and betrayal accounted for PTSD symptoms above and beyond combat exposure. Over a third of the sample reported experiencing perpetration- or betrayal-based PMIEs. Conclusions: The associations of perpetration and betrayal with PTSD, controlling for danger-based combat events, highlight the limitations of conceptualizations and treatments of PTSD based on fear or helplessness as sole etiologic factors.

Individual Differences in the Moralization of Everyday Life

We report on the development and initial validation of the Moralization of Everyday Life Scale (MELS), designed to measure variations in peoples assignment of moral weight to commonplace behaviors. In Study 1, participants reported their judgments for a large number of potential moral infractions in everyday life; principal components analysis revealed 6 main dimensions of these judgments. In Study 2, scores on the 30-item MELS showed high reliability and distinctness from the Big 5 personality traits. In Study 3, scores on the MELS were strongly correlated with scores on an early scale of moral judgments, suggesting convergent validity.

Distinct Trauma Types in Military Service Members Seeking Treatment for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

We examined the frequency of trauma types reported in a cohort of service members seeking treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and compared symptom profiles between types. In this observational study, 999 service members (9.2% women; Mage = 32.91 years; 55.6% White) were evaluated using a standardized assessment procedure to determine eligibility for clinical trials. Participants were evaluated for DSM-IV-TR-defined PTSD using the PTSD Symptom Scale-Interview; all participants reported a Criterion A event. Independent evaluators rated descriptions of Criterion A events as belonging to trauma types at a high degree of reliability, κ = 0.80. Aggregated non-life-threat primary trauma types were more frequently endorsed than aggregated life-threat types, 95% CI [17.10%, 29.20%]. Participants who endorsed moral injury-self traumas had a higher level of reexperiencing (d = 0.39), guilt (hindsight bias, d = 1.06; wrongdoing, d = 0.93), and self-blame (d = 0.58) symptoms, relative to those who reported life threat-self. Participants who experienced traumatic loss had greater reexperiencing (d = 0.39), avoidance (d = 0.22), guilt (responsibility, d = 0.39), and greater peri- and posttraumatic sadness (d = 0.84 and d = 0.70, respectively) symptoms, relative to those who endorsed life threat-self. Relative to life threat-self, moral injury-others was associated with greater peri- (d = 0.36) and posttraumatic (d = 0.33) betrayal/humiliation symptoms, and endorsement of aftermath of violence was associated with greater peri- (d = 0.84) and posttraumatic sadness (d = 0.57) symptoms. War zone traumas were heterogeneous, and non-life-threat traumas were associated with distinct symptoms and problems.