Department of Psychology, Yale University.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California Santa Barbara.
Psychol Sci. 2022 Nov;33(11):1909-1927. doi: 10.1177/09567976221122765. Epub 2022 Oct 6.
A common form of moral hypocrisy occurs when people blame others for moral violations that they themselves commit. It is assumed that hypocritical blamers act in this manner to falsely signal that they hold moral standards that they do not really accept. We tested this assumption by investigating the neurocognitive processes of hypocritical blamers during moral decision-making. Participants (62 adult UK residents; 27 males) underwent functional MRI scanning while deciding whether to profit by inflicting pain on others and then judged the blameworthiness of others' identical decisions. Observers (188 adult U.S. residents; 125 males) judged participants who blamed others for making the same harmful choice to be hypocritical, immoral, and untrustworthy. However, analyzing hypocritical blamers' behaviors and neural responses shows that hypocritical blame was positively correlated with conflicted feelings, neural responses to moral standards, and guilt-related neural responses. These findings demonstrate that hypocritical blamers may hold the moral standards that they apply to others.
当人们指责他人违反道德规范，而自己却犯了同样的错误时，就会出现一种常见的道德虚伪形式。人们假设虚伪的指责者这样做是为了错误地表明他们持有自己并不真正接受的道德标准。我们通过研究虚伪指责者在道德决策过程中的神经认知过程来验证这一假设。参与者（62 名英国成年居民；27 名男性）在决定是否通过伤害他人来获利的同时接受功能磁共振成像扫描，然后判断他人做出相同决策的可责备程度。观察者（188 名美国成年居民；125 名男性）判断那些因为他人做出同样有害选择而指责他人的参与者是虚伪的、不道德的和不值得信任的。然而，分析虚伪指责者的行为和神经反应表明，虚伪的指责与冲突感、对道德标准的神经反应以及与内疚有关的神经反应呈正相关。这些发现表明，虚伪的指责者可能持有他们应用于他人的道德标准。
