Chelsea Schein

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.

The Unifying Moral Dyad: Liberals and Conservatives Share the Same Harm-Based Moral Template

Do moral disagreements regarding specific issues (e.g., patriotism, chastity) reflect deep cognitive differences (i.e., distinct cognitive mechanisms) between liberals and conservatives? Dyadic morality suggests that the answer is “no.” Despite moral diversity, we reveal that moral cognition—in both liberals and conservatives—is rooted in a harm-based template. A dyadic template suggests that harm should be central within moral cognition, an idea tested—and confirmed—through six specific hypotheses. Studies suggest that moral judgment occurs via dyadic comparison, in which counter-normative acts are compared with a prototype of harm. Dyadic comparison explains why harm is the most accessible and important of moral content, why harm organizes—and overlaps with—diverse moral content, and why harm best translates across moral content. Dyadic morality suggests that various moral content (e.g., loyalty, purity) are varieties of perceived harm and that past research has substantially exaggerated moral differences between liberals and conservatives.

The Theory of Dyadic Morality: Reinventing Moral Judgment by Redefining Harm

The nature of harm—and therefore moral judgment—may be misunderstood. Rather than an objective matter of reason, we argue that harm should be redefined as an intuitively perceived continuum. This redefinition provides a new understanding of moral content and mechanism—the constructionist Theory of Dyadic Morality (TDM). TDM suggests that acts are condemned proportional to three elements: norm violations, negative affect, and—importantly—perceived harm. This harm is dyadic, involving an intentional agent causing damage to a vulnerable patient (A→P). TDM predicts causal links both from harm to immorality (dyadic comparison) and from immorality to harm (dyadic completion). Together, these two processes make the “dyadic loop,” explaining moral acquisition and polarization. TDM argues against intuitive harmless wrongs and modular “foundations,” but embraces moral pluralism through varieties of values and the flexibility of perceived harm. Dyadic morality impacts understandings of moral character, moral emotion, and political/cultural differences, and provides research guidelines for moral psychology.

The Prototype Model of Blame: Freeing Moral Cognition From Linearity and Little Boxes

The song “Little Boxes” describes a cookie-cutter town in which the path to success is both precise and invariant: School leads to summer camp, which leads to university, then to prestigious careers, then to spouses and children, and finally to country club memberships. Whether this song describes perfection or perdition is debatable, but we can all agree that the path of life is never so straight. People get pregnant at summer camp, get married in university, and get laid off from their prestigious jobs. Despite the appeal of discrete life stages, real life is messy, with blurred boundaries, back-tracking, dead-ends, and many loops. Like this song, Malle, Guglielmo, and Monroe (this issue) describe a model in which blame is divided into discrete little boxes, linked by an invariant sequence. Just as with real life, we suggest that moral cognition cannot be confined to discrete boxes, whether in structure or in sequence. Instead of a static linear path, recent research suggests that blame judgment proceeds like a swirling vortex, pulling together cognitive elements toward an underlying prototype (e.g., Gray & Schein, 2012). This messier and more dynamic view of judgment is suggested by modern multilevel understandings of the mind and by two phenomena not discussed by Malle et al. (this issue)—dyadic completion and moral typecasting. We explore these arguments and conclude that judgments of blame are best explained by fuzzy prototypes, not by strict paths.

No Absolutism Here: Harm Predicts Moral Judgment 30× Better Than Disgust-Commentary on Scott, Inbar, & Rozin (2016).

Moral absolutism is the idea that people’s moral judgments are insensitive to considerations of harm. Scott, Inbar, and Rozin (2016, this issue) claim that most moral opponents to genetically modified organisms are absolutely opposed—motivated by disgust and not harm. Yet there is no evidence for moral absolutism in their data. Perceived risk/harm is the most significant predictor of moral judgments for “absolutists,” accounting for 30 times more variance than disgust. Reanalyses suggest that disgust is not even a significant predictor of the moral judgments of absolutists once accounting for perceived harm and anger. Instead of revealing actual moral absolutism, Scott et al. find only empty absolutism: hypothetical, forecasted, self-reported moral absolutism. Strikingly, the moral judgments of so-called absolutists are somewhat more sensitive to consequentialist concerns than those of nonabsolutists. Mediation reanalyses reveal that moral judgments are most proximally predicted by harm and not disgust, consistent with dyadic morality.

The MR2: A multi-racial, mega-resolution database of facial stimuli

Faces impart exhaustive information about their bearers, and are widely used as stimuli in psychological research. Yet many extant facial stimulus sets have substantially less detail than faces encountered in real life. In this paper, we describe a new database of facial stimuli, the Multi-Racial Mega-Resolution database (MR2). The MR2 includes 74 extremely high resolution images of European, African, and East Asian faces. This database provides a high-quality, diverse, naturalistic, and well-controlled facial image set for use in research. The MR2 is available under a Creative Commons license, and may be accessed online.

Moralization and Harmification: The Dyadic Loop Explains How the Innocuous Becomes Harmful and Wrong

Greek myths tell of the hero Theseus, who sailed to Knossos to face the fearsome Minotaur. The Minotaur lived within a maze, but it was no ordinary maze. Instead, this labyrinth was carefully constructed by KingMinos to spiral ever inward, drawing Theseus toward the center, where calamity awaited (see Figure 1). Just as this labyrinth led its victims inexorably toward harm, so too do our minds inexorably transform concepts from harmless to harmful. This expanding psychological concept of harm—elegantly revealed by Nick Haslam (this issue)— is accompanied by the expanding concept of immorality. The simultaneous creep of harm and immorality is no accident but reflects a dynamic feedback loop rooted in our harm-based moral minds. As we see, this feedback loop powers the relentlessmoralization and harm-ification of many concepts, including abuse, bullying, prejudice, trauma, addiction, mental illness, animal rights, cigarette smoking, and even political correctness.

Functional intimacy: Needing—But not wanting—The touch of a stranger.

Intimacy is often motivated by love, but sometimes it is merely functional. For example, disrobing and being touched at an airport security check serves the goal of catching a flight, not building a relationship. We propose that this functional intimacy induces discomfort, making people prefer greater social distance from their interaction partner. Supporting this prediction, participants who considered (Experiments 1 and 2) or experienced (Experiment 3) more physically intimate medical procedures preferred a health provider who is less social. Increased psychological intimacy also led people to prefer social distance from cleaning and health providers (Experiments 4–5), a preference revealed by nonverbal behavior (e.g., turning away and looking away, Experiments 6–7). These patterns of distancing are unique to functional (vs. romantic) intimacy (Experiment 7). Although creating social distance may be an effective strategy for coping with functional intimacy, it may have costs for service providers.