University of Warwick, Department of Psychology, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; University of Bath, School of Management, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; University College London, Centre for the Study of Decision-Making Uncertainty, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
University of Minnesota, Department of Psychology, United States of America.
Cognition. 2021 Jan;206:104467. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104467. Epub 2020 Oct 22.
We are all saints and sinners: Some of our actions benefit others, while other actions lead to harm. How do people balance moral rights against moral wrongs when evaluating others' actions? Across 9 studies, we contrast the predictions of three conceptions of intuitive morality-outcome-based (utilitarian), act-based (deontologist), and person-based (virtue ethics) approaches. These experiments establish four principles: Partial offsetting (good acts can partly offset bad acts), diminishing sensitivity (the extent of the good act has minimal impact on its offsetting power), temporal asymmetry (good acts are more praiseworthy when they come after harms), and act congruency (good acts are more praiseworthy to the extent they offset a similar harm). These principles are difficult to square with utilitarian or deontological approaches, but sit well within person-based approaches to moral psychology. Inferences about personal character mediated many of these effects (Studies 1-4), explained differences across items and across individuals (Studies 5-6), and could be manipulated to produce downstream consequences on blame (Studies 7-9); however, there was some evidence for more modest roles of utilitarian and deontological processing too. These findings contribute to conversations about moral psychology and person perception, and may have policy and marketing implications.
我们的某些行为造福他人，而其他行为则导致伤害。当评价他人的行为时，人们如何在道德权利和道德过错之间取得平衡？在 9 项研究中，我们对比了三种直觉道德观念——基于结果的（功利主义）、基于行为的（义务论）和基于人的（美德伦理）——的预测。这些实验确立了四个原则：部分抵消（善举可以部分抵消恶行）、敏感性递减（善行的程度对其抵消能力的影响最小）、时间不对称（伤害之后的善行更值得称赞）和行为一致性（善行更值得称赞，程度上抵消类似的伤害）。这些原则与功利主义或义务论方法很难协调一致，但与人的道德心理学方法非常契合。对个人性格的推断介导了这些影响中的许多（研究 1-4），解释了不同项目和不同个体之间的差异（研究 5-6），并且可以通过操纵来对责备产生下游影响（研究 7-9）；然而，功利主义和义务论处理也有一些更适度的作用的证据。这些发现有助于探讨道德心理学和人的感知，并可能对政策和营销产生影响。
