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Presented By: Department of Psychology

Social Area Brown Bag Talk - The devils we know and love: How relationships bias moral reasoning

Martha Berg, Social Graduate Student

Martha Berg Martha Berg
Martha Berg
Consider the following scenario—you witness your friend steal a TV and are approached by a police officer asking whether you saw anything. How would you respond? Would you protect or condemn your friend? What makes dilemmas like these so vexing is that they pit two fundamental drives against one another: protecting those we love versus abiding by universal rules. Here we demonstrate that when people are presented with scenarios forcing them to decide whether to protect or condemn the perpetrators of crimes, they demonstrate an extremely strong bias to protect close (vs. distant) others, and the size the of this effect increases along with the severity of the crime they observe. Moreover, using event-related potentials (ERPs) we show that the amplitude of the P300, an early neural component occurring around 300ms that is sensitive to expectancy violations, was greater when people thought about close (vs. distant) others committing crimes and predicted people’s decisions to protect versus condemn perpetrators’ behaviors. However, we show that the behavioral bias toward close others is attenuated by a brief self-distancing manipulation. Preliminary cross-cultural work shows that the bias is also present but attenuated among a Japanese sample, suggesting that cultural factors may modulate the balance between loyalty and justice. These findings underscore the importance of studying the role of close relationships in moral reasoning.
Martha Berg Martha Berg
Martha Berg

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