![]() Based on the literature, we were agnostic as to whether altruistic motivations would be better explained by the general tendency to endorse harm and care considerations or fairness and justice considerations. A wealth of research now highlights that humans are highly attuned to both fairness ( Fehr & Schmidt, 1999) and harm considerations ( Cushman et al., 2012 Greene et al., 2009). Theorists argue that individuals navigate moral challenges either by relying predominately on their sensitivity to harm and care considerations or through a well-developed calculus sensitive to justice and fairness concerns ( Gilligan, 1982 Kohlberg & Hersh, 1977). These two orientations are considered to be the most dominant foundations for moral decision-making, each capturing distinct perspectives: treat others fairly and help others in need ( Gilligan & Attanucci, 1988). There is evidence that distinct patterns of moral judgments result from varying sensitivities to fairness and harm concerns ( Haidt & Graham, 2007b). We also wanted to investigate possible psychological mechanisms motivating an individual to harm another for self-gain. To test this, under both real and hypothetical contexts, and across different classes of moral dilemmas, we first explore whether a target’s gender influences the propensity to harm another. In other words, these gender biases may influence females receiving greater chivalrous treatment (i.e., more protection from harm at the expense of self-gain) than their male counterparts. ![]() If this were the case, a target’s gender-and the social biases that associate males with strength and females with helplessness-may modulate the endorsement of harm, resulting in divergent altruistic behavior. Given how robustly social context can dictate harm perception, a lingering question is whether a target’s gender contributes to the social framework of a moral dilemma, and thus the willingness to harm another. For instance, a target’s identity is known to effect the level of sympathy or punishment that is bestowed ( Cikara, Bruneau, & Saxe, 2011 Gray & Wegner, 2009), and how a person responds to a target’s pain is moderated by their relationship with the distressed individual ( Cikara, Botvinick, & Fiske, 2011). This has been observed in various classes of moral dilemmas and with different manipulations, including pushing a person onto train tracks versus pulling a lever to reroute the train ( Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001), showing more versus less skin when administering electric shocks ( Gray, Knobe, Sheskin, Bloom, & Barrett, 2011), observing someone’s face rather than just their hand respond to pain ( FeldmanHall, Dalgleish, Evans, & Mobbs, 2015), and discharging a toy gun into another’s face versus witnessing such an action occurring ( Cushman, Gray, Gaffey, & Mendes, 2012).Įven after the harm has occurred, social context can further influence how one engages with a distressed target. For example, features that make harm perceptually salient decrease the likelihood of engaging in harmful behavior. Research exploring the interaction between harming and helping demonstrates that how readily an individual harms another appears to be a function of the social context in which the harm is embedded. This reliance on using a target’s features to infer overarching personality traits ( Asch, 1946) has proven to be powerful in influencing one’s judgments ( Hamilton & Sherman, 1996 Higgins, Rholes, & Jones, 1977) and even behavior ( Tversky & Kahneman, 1981).įrom this work, theorists have further posited that a target’s features may affect endorsements of harm violation ( Gray, Waytz, & Young, 2012), which fits with the evidence that harming behavior in particular is susceptible to shifting social cues that signal distinct morally appropriate behavior. Dovetailing with this, classic research on gender stereotyping demonstrates that both implicit judgments ( Banaji & Hardin, 1996a) and explicit actions ( Eagly & Crowley, 1986 Moss-Racusin, Dovidio, Brescoll, Graham, & Handelsman, 2012) are affected by gender bias-that is, associating males with strength and power and females with nurturance and helplessness. This is exemplified by “women and children first”-a historical maritime code of conduct stating that when there is a life-threatening situation, those who are more vulnerable should be saved first ( Kipling, 1907). A culturally pervasive social norm is the chivalrous idea that women should be protected from harm.
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