Bo Yang, Lihua Zhang
College of psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China.
Psychol Rep. 2024 Jan 11:332941241227397. doi: 10.1177/00332941241227397.
When judging the morality of an action, individuals may exhibit a bias stemming from group favoritism. It leads to the expression of different moral evaluations of the same behaviors performed by different social groups. The current study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the influence of in-group favoritism (in-group vs. homogeneous out-group) and out-group favoritism (in-group vs. high-quality out-group) on moral judgments. Two experiments were conducted, showing a higher moral score of the in-group compared to the homogeneous out-group by participants. ERP data indicated that in-group stimulation triggered larger P2 amplitudes than homogeneous out-group. Additionally, a larger N400-like amplitude, localized to the right hemisphere, was observed during the evaluation of the homogeneous out-group. Significantly, when comparing the in-group to the high-quality out-group, there was no discernible difference in moral scores or ERP amplitudes. Overall, the results indicate that in-group favoritism can affect moral judgments, especially when assessing homogeneous out-groups, but it can be reduced by the characteristics of groups.
在判断一个行为的道德性时，个体可能会表现出源于群体偏袒的偏见。这导致对不同社会群体所做出的相同行为产生不同的道德评价。当前的研究使用事件相关电位（ERP）来探究内群体偏袒（内群体与同质外群体）和外群体偏袒（内群体与高质量外群体）对道德判断的影响。进行了两项实验，结果显示参与者对内群体的道德评分高于同质外群体。ERP数据表明，内群体刺激引发的P2波幅比同质外群体更大。此外，在对同质外群体进行评价时，观察到在右半球出现了更大的类似N400的波幅。值得注意的是，当将内群体与高质量外群体进行比较时，道德评分或ERP波幅没有明显差异。总体而言，结果表明内群体偏袒会影响道德判断，尤其是在评估同质外群体时，但这种影响可以因群体特征而减轻。
