We created practical moral dilemmas for which participants imagined witnessing a transgression by a target person. The identity
of the transgressor was manipulated to be either a stranger or the participant's brother. In Experiment 1, whether the target person
committed a violation was left ambiguous. Participants made factual (how strongly they believe the target person actually
committed a transgression) and unethicality judgments regarding the incident, and rated their willingness to report the transgressor
to the police. Given ambiguity (Experiment 1), participants interpreted the facts in favor of their brother, but not in favor of a
stranger. This interpretation led to moral judgments and willingness to report that favored family over strangers, while creating
overall coherence in reasoning. In Experiment 2, we eliminated the ambiguity of the factual situation so that the possibility of
achieving coherence between unethicality of an act and leniency toward a family member was blocked. Nonetheless, participants
were less willing to report their brother to the police. Experiment 3 replicated the findings of the first two experiments within an
integrated study design. Results from path analyses indicated that the factual judgment depended on factual understanding of an
event, but willingness to report depended on identity of the target (i.e., brother vs. stranger), even at the cost of reduced coherence
in reasoning. Moral decisions are thus strongly influenced by agent-relative obligations, such as duty to protect a family member.
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Familial Guilt: A Cross-Society Comparison of Judgments of Collective Family Responsibility
When a group member commits wrongdoing, people sometimes assign responsibility and blame not only to the wrongdoer but also to other members of the same group. We examined such assignment of collective responsibility in the context of exploitation of one family by another. Participants were recruited from the United States and South Korea, which are known to vary in cultural norms and endorsement of collectivistic values. Participants in both countries rated the degree to which an agent (grandson) should be held responsible for his grandfather’s exploitation of a victimized family, while
varying the closeness of familial connection. Participants’ responsibility judgments showed sensitivity to whether the grandson received financial benefit from the wrongdoer and to the perceived closeness between the grandson and the wrongdoer. Korean participants imposed greater responsibility on the agent than did American participants. Implications for
understanding the influence of social norms on moral judgments are discussed.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1827374
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10330142
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract This cross-cultural study compared judgments of moral wrongness for physical and emotional harm with varying combinations of in-group vs. out-group agents and victims across six countries: the United States of America (N = 937), the United Kingdom (N = 995), Romania (N = 782), Brazil (N = 856), South Korea (N = 1776), and China (N = 1008). Consistent with our hypothesis we found evidence of an insider agent effect, where moral violations committed by outsider agents are generally considered more morally wrong than the same violations done by insider agents. We also found support for an insider victim effect where moral violations that were committed against an insider victim generally were seen as more morally wrong than when the same violations were committed against an outsider, and this effect held across all countries. These findings provide evidence that the insider versus outsider status of agents and victims does affect moral judgments. However, the interactions of these identities with collectivism, psychological closeness, and type of harm (emotional or physical) are more complex than what is suggested by previous literature.
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