Benoît Monin

Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice.

Three experiments supported the hypothesis that people are more willing to express attitudes that could be viewed as prejudiced when their past behavior has established their credentials as nonprejudiced persons. In Study 1, participants given the opportunity to disagree with blatantly sexist statements were later more willing to favor a man for a stereotypically male job. In Study 2, participants who first had the opportunity to select a member of a stereotyped group (a woman or an African American) for a category-neutral job were more likely to reject a member of that group for a job stereotypically suited for majority members. In Study 3, participants who had established credentials as nonprejudiced persons revealed a greater willingness to express a politically incorrect opinion even when the audience was unaware of their credentials. The general conditions under which people feel licensed to act on illicit motives are discussed.

Deciding Versus Reacting: Conceptions of Moral Judgment and the Reason-Affect Debate

Recent approaches to moral judgment have typically pitted emotion against reason. In an effort to move beyond this debate, we propose that authors presenting diverging models are considering quite different prototypical situations: those focusing on the resolution of complex dilemmas conclude that morality involves sophisticated reasoning, whereas those studying reactions to shocking moral violations find that morality involves quick, affect-laden processes. We articulate these diverging dominant approaches and consider three directions for future research (moral temptation, moral self-image, and lay understandings of morality) that we propose have not received sufficient attention as a result of the focus on these two prototypical situations within moral psychology.

Fitting In but Getting Fat: Identity Threat and Dietary Choices Among U.S. Immigrant Groups

In two experiments, we tested the hypothesis that pressure felt by U.S. immigrant groups to prove they belong in America causes them to consume more prototypically American, and consequently less healthy, foods. Asian Americans were three times more likely to report a prototypically American food as their favorite after being asked whether they spoke English than when they had not been asked; in contrast, questioning the English abilities of White Americans had no effect on their reports (Experiment 1). Also, Asian Americans ordered and ate dishes that were more American and contained an average of 182 additional calories and 12 extra grams of fat when their American identity was directly challenged than when their American identity was not challenged (Experiment 2). Identity-based psychological processes may help explain why the diets of U.S. immigrant groups tend to decline in nutritional value with longer residence in the United States and over generations.

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).

Do-Gooder Derogation Disparaging Morally Motivated Minorities to Defuse Anticipated Reproach

Two studies document do-gooder derogation (the putting down of morally motivated others), by studying the reactions of meat eaters to vegetarians. In Study 1, 47% of participants freely associated negative terms with vegetarians and the valence of the words was negatively related to how much participants expected vegetarians to see themselves as morally superior to nonvegetarians. In Study 2, we manipulated the salience of anticipated moral reproach by varying whether participants reported these expectations before or after rating vegetarians. As predicted, participants rated vegetarians less positively after imagining their moral judgment of meat eaters. These studies empirically document the backlash reported by moral minorities and trace it back to resentment by the mainstream against feeling morally judged.

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.

Perceptions of a Fluid Consensus: Uniqueness Bias, False Consensus, False Polarization, and Pluralistic Ignorance in a Water Conservation Crisis

A 5-day field study (N = 415) during and right after a shower ban demonstrated multifaceted social projection and the tendency to draw personality inferences from simple behavior in a time of drastic consensus change. Bathers thought showering was more prevalent than did non-bathers (false consensus) and respondents consistently underestimated the prevalence of the desirable and common behavior—be it not showering during the shower ban or showering after the ban (uniqueness bias). Participants thought that bathers and non-bathers during the ban differed greatly in their general concern for the community, but self-reports demonstrated that this gap was illusory (false polarization). Finally, bathers thought other bathers cared less than they did, whereas non-bathers thought other non-bathers cared more than they did (pluralistic ignorance). The study captures the many biases at work in social perception in a time of social change.

Letting People Off the Hook: When Do Good Deeds Excuse Transgressions?:

Three studies examined when and why an actor’s prior good deeds make observers more willing to excuse—or license—his or her subsequent, morally dubious behavior. In a pilot study, actors’ good deeds made participants more forgiving of the actors’ subsequent transgressions. In Study 1, participants only licensed blatant transgressions that were in a different domain than actors’ good deeds; blatant transgressions in the same domain appeared hypocritical and suppressed licensing (e.g., fighting adolescent drug use excused sexual harassment, but fighting sexual harassment did not). Study 2 replicated these effects and showed that good deeds made observers license ambiguous transgressions (e.g., behavior that might or might not represent sexual harassment) regardless of whether the good deeds and the transgression were in the same or in a different domain—but only same-domain good deeds did so by changing participants’ construal of the transgressions. Discussion integrates two models of why licensing occurs.

Where Do We Look During Potentially Offensive Behavior

Imagine (or remember) being the only member of a particular social group in the room. Someone makes a questionable remark about your group, and all eyes turn to you. If you have ever experienced this, you know that it is doubly unpleasant. Not only has your social group been besmirched, but also you have suddenly become the center of unwelcome attention. In the experiment reported here, we used eye movement recordings to investigate this phenomenon from the perspective of the people looking at the offended bystander. Our findings point toward the function of this behavior, and reveal the surprising depth of cognitive processing that is engaged by social interaction. One explanation for this attention is that people are practicing social referencing—seeking out the responses of a potentially victimized groupmember to help them assess the situation (Crosby, 2006). Because of their personal experiencewith prejudice (Essed, 1992), minority-group members may be seen as experts on prejudice (Swim,Cohen,&Hyers, 1998) andmay also be seen as experts in the area of morality (Vorauer, 2006). In fact, minority-group members may have more influence than majority-group members over judgments of discrimination (Crosby & Monin, 2008). Given these findings, the responses of minority-group members may be informative as people assess controversial comments. A simpler, alternative hypothesis is that members of relevant groups are looked at simply because of low-level associations; hearing ‘‘the economy is in the red,’’ one might look at someone wearing red. Eye movement studies often reveal such effects, in which words or parts of words trigger looks to potential referents (Tanenhaus, Spivey-Knowlton, Eberhard, & Sedivy, 1995), even when the referents have been removed and the locations are empty (Richardson& Spivey, 2000). This alternative association hypothesis predicts that the mere mention of a social group will lead people to look at a member of that group, regardless of whether the group member might provide useful information. We tested the association hypothesis by emulating potentially offensive behavior in the lab. Four males (three White and one Black) discussed university admissions. One of the White discussants criticized affirmative action, andwemanipulatedwhether or not participants believed the Black discussant heard what was said. Whereas the social-referencing hypothesis suggests that he would be fixated only if he could have an informative reaction, the association hypothesis predicts that he would be fixated regardless.

Potential Moral Stigma and Reactions to Sexually Transmitted Diseases: Evidence for a Disjunction Fallacy

Five experiments demonstrate how potential moral stigma leads people to underplay their susceptibility to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and dampens their interest in getting tested. After adding unprotected sex to a list of otherwise innocuous possible vectors for a disease, the authors found that infected people were perceived to be less moral (Experiment 1a), and individuals believed that if they had the disease, others would see them as less moral too (Experiment 1b). Adding this stigmatized vector also reduced reported testing intentions (Experiment 2) and perceived risk of exposure (Experiment 3)—a disjunction fallacy because adding a potential cause reduced estimated likelihood, in violation of basic probability rules. Finally, the authors replicated the effect in a computer virus analog (Experiment 4) and showed that it did not result from simply knowing that one has not engaged in the stigmatized behavior. Results suggest that avoidance of potential stigma can have dramatic health consequences, both for an individuals health decision and for health policy.