Suchergebnisse

This article examines children's and adults' willingness to give a nonmonetary resource—affection—to in-group versus out-group members. In a study of attitudes toward Christian, Jewish, and non-religious people, religious participants—children as well as adults—reported that the religious out-group member was more like them and more likeable than the non-religious character, despite the fact that both characters were members of an out-group. Non-religious participants did not distinguish between out-group characters in response to these questions. Although these patterns emerged among both children and adults, we also found that children reported more affection toward Christian characters than did adults. We discuss implications of the results for the study of generosity as well as for intergroup attitudes, religious cognition, and development.

Abstract
In Natural Justice Binmore offers a game-theoretic map to the landscape of human morality. Following a long tradition of such accounts, Binmore's argument concerns the forces of biological and cultural evolution that have shaped our judgments about the appropriate distribution of resources. In this sense, Binmore focuses on the morality of outcomes. This is a valuable perspective to which we add a friendly amendment from our own research: moral judgments appear to depend on process just as much as outcome. What matters is not just that the butler is dead, but who killed him, how, and for what reason. Thus, a complete understanding of natural justice' will entail an account not only of evolutionary pressures, but also of the psychological mechanisms upon which they act.

In a comprehensive investigation involving a reanalysis of an existing study and five new preregistered studies ( N = 4,032), we investigate whether empirically identified longtermists, determined by their Longtermism Beliefs Scale (LBS) scores, exhibit heightened moral regard for present and future generations across social distances. Longtermists consistently value future generations, present generations, outgroups, and nature more than the general population does, as measured by the Moral Expansiveness Scale (MES). They also exhibit reduced dehumanization tendencies towards outgroups and future people, alongside greater identification with their community, compatriots, and all humans. Various factors explain the link between longtermism beliefs and moral regard, with moral obligation and identification with all of humanity potentially mediating it. Notably, the LBS maintains its significant impact on moral regard even when considering other future-oriented factors, highlighting its unique predictive power. These findings offer valuable insights into longtermist ethics, bridging theory and practical implications for safeguarding present and future generations amidst existential threats.

Political conflict between American Democrats and Republicans and ethnoreligious conflict between Israelis and Palestinians seem intractable, despite the availability of reasonable compromise solutions in both cases. This research demonstrates a fundamental cognitive bias driving such conflict intractability: Adversaries attribute their ingroup's actions to ingroup love more than outgroup hate and attribute their outgroup's actions to outgroup hate more than ingroup love. This biased attributional pattern increases beliefs and intentions associated with conflict intractability, including unwillingness to negotiate and unwillingness to vote for compromise solutions. In addition, offering financial incentives for accuracy in evaluating one's outgroup mitigates this biased attributional pattern and its consequences. Understanding this bias and how to alleviate it can contribute to conflict resolution on a global scale.

Although only 23 people on average have been killed per year by terrorist attacks in the United States since 2001, American citizens and politicians consistently rank terrorism as a top security threat, leading to costly wars abroad and the repression of civil liberties at home. To what extent can education about terrorism alter perceptions of the threat? Much existing scholarship—and consistent polling over the past two decades—suggests that it cannot, but we disagree. Evidence gathered from an extensive series of experimental and observational surveys involving students in 31 terrorism and non-terrorism related courses at 12 universities—including massive open online courses (MOOC) and online surveys—reveals that the more individuals learn about terrorism, the smaller they perceive the threat to be to themselves and to the U.S. In the fight against terrorism and the fear it inspires, knowing really is half the battle.

Although only 23 people on average have been killed per year by terrorist attacks in the United States since 2001, American citizens and politicians consistently rank terrorism as a top security threat, leading to costly wars abroad and the repression of civil liberties at home. To what extent can education about terrorism alter perceptions of the threat? Much existing scholarship—and consistent polling over the past two decades—suggests that it cannot, but we disagree. Evidence gathered from an extensive series of experimental and observational surveys involving students in 31 terrorism and non-terrorism related courses at 12 universities—including massive open online courses (MOOC) and online surveys—reveals that the more individuals learn about terrorism, the smaller they perceive the threat to be to themselves and to the U.S. In the fight against terrorism and the fear it inspires, knowing really is half the battle.

Abstract
Performing prosociality in public presents a paradox: only by doing so can people demonstrate their virtue and also influence others through their example, yet observers may derogate actors' behavior as mere "virtue signaling." Here we investigate the role of observability of actors' behavior as one reason that people engage in such "virtue discounting." Further, we investigate observers' motivational inferences as a mechanism of this effect, using the comparison of generosity and fairness as a case study among virtues. Across 14 studies (7 preregistered, total N = 9,360), we show that public actors are perceived as less virtuous than private actors, and that this effect is stronger for generosity compared to fairness (i.e., differential virtue discounting). Exploratory factor analysis suggests that three types of motives—principled, reputation-signaling, and norm-signaling—affect virtue discounting. Using structural equation modeling, we show that observability's effect on actors' trait virtue ratings is largely explained by inferences that actors have less principled motivations. Further, we leverage experimental evidence to provide stronger causal evidence of these effects. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of our findings, as well as future directions for research on the social perception of virtue.

Do clashes between ideologies reflect policy differences or something more fundamental? The present research suggests they reflect core psychological differences such that liberals express compassion toward less structured and more encompassing entities (i.e., universalism), whereas conservatives express compassion toward more well-defined and less encompassing entities (i.e., parochialism). Here we report seven studies illustrating universalist versus parochial differences in compassion. Studies 1a-1c show that liberals, relative to conservatives, express greater moral concern toward friends relative to family, and the world relative to the nation. Studies 2a-2b demonstrate these universalist versus parochial preferences extend toward simple shapes depicted as proxies for loose versus tight social circles. Using stimuli devoid of political relevance demonstrates that the universalist-parochialist distinction does not simply reflect differing policy preferences. Studies 3a-3b indicate these universalist versus parochial tendencies extend to humans versus nonhumans more generally, demonstrating the breadth of these psychological differences.

We conducted preregistered replications of 28 classic and contemporary published findings, with protocols that were peer reviewed in advance, to examine variation in effect magnitudes across samples and settings. Each protocol was administered to approximately half of 125 samples that comprised 15,305 participants from 36 countries and territories. Using the conventional criterion of statistical significance (p < .05), we found that 15 (54%) of the replications provided evidence of a statistically significant effect in the same direction as the original finding. With a strict significance criterion (p < .0001), 14 (50%) of the replications still provided such evidence, a reflection of the extremely high-powered design. Seven (25%) of the replications yielded effect sizes larger than the original ones, and 21 (75%) yielded effect sizes smaller than the original ones. The median comparable Cohen's ds were 0.60 for the original findings and 0.15 for the replications. The effect sizes were small (< 0.20) in 16 of the replications (57%), and 9 effects (32%) were in the direction opposite the direction of the original effect. Across settings, the Q statistic indicated significant heterogeneity in 11 (39%) of the replication effects, and most of those were among the findings with the largest overall effect sizes; only 1 effect that was near zero in the aggregate showed significant heterogeneity according to this measure. Only 1 effect had a tau value greater than .20, an indication of moderate heterogeneity. Eight others had tau values near or slightly above .10, an indication of slight heterogeneity. Moderation tests indicated that very little heterogeneity was attributable to the order in which the tasks were performed or whether the tasks were administered in lab versus online. Exploratory comparisons revealed little heterogeneity between Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) cultures and less WEIRD cultures (i.e., cultures with relatively high and low WEIRDness scores, respectively). Cumulatively, variability in the observed effect sizes was attributable more to the effect being studied than to the sample or setting in which it was studied.